Prison Watch Network International

Feb 20 2012: National Occupy for Prisoners Day! Plz Join!

2012-02-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

Endorsed by Prison Watch Network, amongst many others:

From the website of the National Occupy for Prisoners Day:

website: Occupy4prisoners.org

Support is growing for the National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners and Occupy San Quentin!

We’ve added flyers for Occupy San Quentin, and more endorsers for Feb 20.

Connect with us:

Facebook: Occupy4Prisoners

Twitter: @Occupy4Prisoner

We need YOU! Are you planning an action? Let us know and we will list, promote and support! Email occupy4prisoners [at] gmail [dot] com!
Actions

Bay Area, California
Occupy San Quentin . East Gate, San Quentin. Monday, February 20, 2012, 12 noon – 3pm. Carpool/meet-up – 10am at Oscar Grant Plaza (14th and Broadway, Oakland) Email occupy4prisoners [at] gmail [dot] com for more information.

Chicago, Illinois
Action being planned, email randi [at] nodeathpenalty [dot] org to connect up. Organizing meeting: Saturday, February 4, 2012. 4:00pm.
Occupy Chicago Headquarters
500 W Cermak, Chicago, Illinois

Los Angeles, California
Join California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement – CFASC
at 3:00pm on Monday, February 20th
as we unite with others across the nation for a
National Day of Occupation in Support of Prisoners
We are gathering in front of LA’s own House of Torture
The Los Angeles County Jail
441 Bauchet Street
(corner of Vines and Bauchet)
Los Angeles, CA 90012
We are their voices!!

New York, NY
Protest Monday Feb. 20 – 2pm
Lincoln Correctional Facility
31 West 110th Street, NYC

The Prisoner Solidarity Subcommittee of Occupy Wall Street answers Occupy Oakland’s call to action and march in solidarity with the Pelican Bay hunger strike, with brothers and sisters who are dispossessed by the criminal INJUSTICE system, and with political prisoners everywhere.

Washington, DC
What: Rally in Support of Prisoners & Protest Against New Visitation Rules at DC Jail
When: Feb. 20th, 12 Noon
Where: 1901 D St. SE, Washington, DC
Who: Occupy DC, Criminal InJustice Committee
Contact: jtuzcu [at] gmail [dot] com

Why: Feb. 20th is National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners day. Actions are planned around the country in support prisoners and against mass incarceration. In DC, we will also be protesting newly planned visitation procedures for prisoners and their families. These procedures will replace the already inhuman practice of placing thick glass between prisoners and their families during visits with a new video teleconference system in which contact will be conducted through a television screen. Adding to this outrage, the DC jail is spending millions on this new inhumane form of isolation and control.

Do you have an event planned? Email us at occupy4prisoners at gmail.com!

The Caging of America

2012-02-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

Why do we lock up so many people?
by Adam Gopnik January 30, 2012
In: The New Yorker

Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.—more than were in Stalin’s gulags. Photograph by Steve Liss.

A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime. The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock.

That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.

For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a “carceral state,” in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. Though we avoid looking directly at prisons, they seep obliquely into our fashions and manners. Wealthy white teen-agers in baggy jeans and laceless shoes and multiple tattoos show, unconsciously, the reality of incarceration that acts as a hidden foundation for the country.

How did we get here? How is it that our civilization, which rejects hanging and flogging and disembowelling, came to believe that caging vast numbers of people for decades is an acceptably humane sanction? There’s a fairly large recent scholarly literature on the history and sociology of crime and punishment, and it tends to trace the American zeal for punishment back to the nineteenth century, apportioning blame in two directions. There’s an essentially Northern explanation, focussing on the inheritance of the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, and its “reformist” tradition; and a Southern explanation, which sees the prison system as essentially a slave plantation continued by other means. Robert Perkinson, the author of the Southern revisionist tract “Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire,” traces two ancestral lines, “from the North, the birthplace of rehabilitative penology, to the South, the fountainhead of subjugationist discipline.” In other words, there’s the scientific taste for reducing men to numbers and the slave owners’ urge to reduce blacks to brutes.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1lAM9NZUI

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1lAJ1f2CD

Four ways to relieve overcrowded prisons

2011-12-31T02:36:00.000-08:00

Opinion
in: CS Monitor

Four ways to relieve overcrowded prisons
Finally, America is beginning to tackle overcrowded prisons, prompted by financially strapped states that can no longer afford them. The road to prison reform, and less crowding, includes revamping 'three strikes' laws, as in California, and limiting pre-trial detention.

By Arjun Sethi / December 29, 2011

Necessity can spur novelty. Even political novelty. As the need for fiscal austerity grows, an unlikely alliance has emerged between policymakers and public advocates who have long sought criminal justice reform. These policymakers are realizing what advocates have reiterated for years: The nation's addiction to incarceration as a curb on crime must end. The evidence is staggering.

In California, 54 prisoners may share a single toilet and 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium supervised by two or three officers. Suicidal inmates may be held for protracted periods in cages without toilets and the wait times for mental health care sometimes reach 12 months.

Citing these conditions and more, the Supreme Court ruled in May that California prisoners were deprived adequate access to medical and mental health care in violation of the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It ordered the early release of tens of thousands of inmates.

Prison overcrowding is ubiquitous and shows few signs of abating: Between 1970 and 2005, the nation's inmate population grew by 700 percent. Besides impeding access to health care, overcrowding also creates unsafe and unsanitary conditions, diverts prison resources away from education and social development, and forces low- and high-risk offenders to mingle, increasing the likelihood of recidivism.

Expect additional lawsuits. That's why a consortium of states, including Illinois, Texas, and my home state of Virginia, submitted an amicus curiae or friend-of-the-court brief in support of the state of California.

America's overreliance on incarceration has also impeded the rights of criminal defendants. TheSixth Amendment guarantees legal representation to individuals charged with a crime. Yet, because of the crushing volume of cases, indigent defense programs often suffer from inadequate staffing, funding, and supervision.

In Kentucky, a public defender may represent more than 450 clients in a single year. In Miami, Florida, the annual case load is nearly 500 felonies and 2,225 misdemeanors. The consequences include wrongful incarceration, wrongful convictions, and guilty pleas when meritorious defenses are otherwise available.

Civil rights groups in Michigan and New York have already brought lawsuits seeking an overhaul of their states' indigent defense systems. These lawsuits might be a harbinger for the future: States unfaithful to the promise of the Sixth Amendment may be forced to increase funding and restructure legislative priorities.

Protecting prisoners and criminal defendants is not just about fidelity to the Bill of Rights. It is about recognizing that they are acutely vulnerable because they do not have access to coalitions and political networks capable of effecting change. Affording them protection is consistent with the enduring constitutional principle that political democracy alone cannot adequately protect the rights of certain groups of people.

First, revamp habitual-offender laws, now in effect in more than 20 states, which regularly yield perverse sentences.

California's three-strikes law, for example, was passed during the paranoia that followed the searing murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas by a long-time violent offender, and is so egregiously punitive that nonviolent petty theft may serve as a "third strike." Leandro Andrade, a father of three, who never once committed a violent felony, received two sentences of 25 years-to-life for stealing children's videotapes, including "Free Willy 2" and "Cinderella," from Kmart. A new ballot initiative in California, "The Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012," seeks to change this law.

Second, implement misdemeanor reform by decriminalizing offenses such as feeding the homeless, dog-leash violations, and occupying multiple seats on the subway. Such reform is vital: between 1972 and 2006, misdemeanor prosecutions rose from 5 million to 10.5 million.

Third, limit the use of pre-trial detention. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's prison population haven't been convicted of a crime - they are awaiting trial. Many are arrested for low-risk offenses such as disturbing the peace or traffic violations, and they languish in jail because they can't afford bail. Releasing these individuals would not jeopardize public safety and would reduce overcrowding and public defender case loads. Just this year, Kentucky terminated pre-trial detention for numerous drug offenses and mandated citations rather than arrests for certain misdemeanors.

Fourth, impose nonprison penalties on those arrested for technical parole and probation violations like missing a meeting or court appearance. This would dramatically ameliorate overcrowding and excessive case loads given that over a third of all prison admissions are for such types of violations. Texas is leading the charge here, and through such measures has significantly reduced its inmate population.

The spirit that animates the Sixth and Eighth Amendments is human dignity. A recognition that no matter the crime or harm, criminal defendants and prisoners retain a dignity that must be respected.

Thirty years ago, a group of inmates claimed they were deprived of this dignity and, in what has since become a subject of fascination in American pop culture, rioted at Attica Correctional Facilityin New York. The ensuing violence and its death toll serves as an ominous reminder that Americamust pursue criminal justice reform if it is to honor this dignity.

Arjun Sethi is an attorney.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/1229/Four-ways-to-relieve-overcrowded-prisons

Force-fed and beaten – life for women in jail

2011-12-18T02:40:00.000-08:00

From: The Independent
Dec 18, 2011
New UN guidelines are being flouted worldwide, Independent on Sunday research shows
By: Molly Guinness

Female prisoners around the world are being subjected to body cavity searches, beatings and force-feeding, are held in padded cells, shackled during childbirth, and made to work in chain gangs. Some of the worst conditions are in developing countries, but there are also serious abuses and overcrowding in Europe and North America. These are the major findings of a survey by The Independent on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of United Nations rules governing the treatment of women in prison.

The "Bangkok Rules" make stipulations about contact with families, gender-specific healthcare, psychological treatment and hygiene, and they forbid strip searches in most circumstances. The guidelines were adopted on 21 December 2010, but reports from around the world show they are being widely flouted.

In Greece, for example, prisoners have been offered a choice between a vaginal search and solitary confinement on a course of laxatives. Chinese prison officers encouraged inmates to tie each other up and fight. In Turkmenistan, prisoners are shackled to their beds as they give birth - a practice that is also legal in most of the United States. South African prisoners complain that they run out of water on an almost monthly basis. A Russian male deputy prison governor was jailed for beating female inmates with his fists and boots. Rape victims have been jailed in Afghanistan for having extramarital sex. And women's prisons from Russia to Canada, France to Australia have been condemned for their appalling living conditions and inadequate mental and physical healthcare.

Just as alarming is the steep rise in the number of women being jailed. More than 500,000 are in prison around the world. In the US alone, there are now eight times more women in prison than 30 years ago. Fiona Cannon, who chairs the Prison Reform Trust's Women's Justice Taskforce, said women's prisons are now seen as "stop-gap providers of drug detox, social care, mental health assessment and treatment, and temporary housing". Self-harm and suicide are far more common among female prisoners than male, relatively few women are in jail for violent crimes, a majority have children, and many are drug addicts or victims of sexual abuse.

At Johannesburg Women's Prison, cells typically contain one toilet, one sink, one shower and as many as 40 people. Prisoners are locked in from 2pm to 8am. "People can kill each other before they unlock the cells," Duduzile Matlhabadile, a former prisoner, told The IoS. "You don't know what's going to happen. It's not safe in there." Ms Matlhabadile, who served 12 years for armed robbery and homicide, recalled an incident in which a woman threw boiling water over a fellow prisoner; it took two hours for the guards to come and open the doors. She said her cell would often be without water for two days at a time.

A former judge inspector of prisons in South Africa, Deon van Zyl, last year called the country's prison conditions "shockingly inhumane". Campaigners at the Wits Justice Project, which investigates problems in South Afica's justice system, say the Department of Correctional Services has ignored their requests to gain access to prisons since February, adding that anecdotal evidence indicates conditions have not improved.

In northern Turkmenistan, inmates at the Dashoguz Women's Prison colony are reportedly handcuffed to the bed from both sides while giving birth. The baby is given away and the woman returns to forced labour a day or two later. More than 2,000 women are housed in a colony built for 1,000. Fights break out when food is handed out: black bread, porridge and a thin soup made of bones, cotton oil and pumpkin make up the daily diet.

The EU has its share of horrors, too. Greece's Thiva Women's Prison is an hour north of Athens. A former detoxification centre, it has the bleak atmosphere of a converted warehouse. Its dormitories each hold six bunk beds and a couple of single beds. A communal area features a concrete floor, dark green walls and little else; the exercise yard contains no equipment or shelter. Messages are conveyed to inmates via a loudspeaker. Vaginal searches are conducted there, as in other women's prisons in Greece. Until earlier this year, prisoners who refused a vaginal examination on arrival were placed in a segregation unit for several days and made to take laxatives. Authorities say vaginal searches are now undertaken only in exceptional circumstances and are now done by trained doctors, rather than by nursing assistants. They say laxatives are no longer administered, but monitors from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture confirmed that the practice was still going on when they visited in January.

In France, strip searches are more or less routine, and inmates' letters seen by The IoS complain about being made to adopt degrading positions. One pregnant woman was told to lift up her breasts while being searched before being permitted to see her family in the visiting room. But the real problem in France's prisons is healthcare. In the mixed-sex Nîmes Prison in southern France, for example, there is no facility for gynaecological examinations, which means that no preventative consultations are done.

In England and Wales, conditions are far more benign, but the number of women in jail has increased from 1,800 in 1996 to 4,100 now. More than half of female prisoners say that they have suffered domestic violence, 37 per cent have previously attempted suicide, nearly 40 per cent left school before 16, and one in three have experienced sexual abuse. More than two-thirds of female prisoners have children, which means, according to Home Office research in 2003, that prison deprives nearly 20,000 children of their mothers each year. And judges do not take into account whether a defendant is a primary carer. "It's deeply ingrained in judges that a child must not be an excuse to avoid imprisonment," said Rona Epstein, who has studied 47 cases in England and Wales where judges have ignored the rights of the child.

The situation in North America is worse. The California state prison healthcare system has been in federal receivership since 2006. To get healthcare and living conditions to a constitutional minimum, the state has been ordered to reduce its prison population by 33,000 over the next two years. In the meantime, supplies of medicines and sanitary products are limited, and understaffing means prisons are in lock-down mode. Two-thirds of education staff have been laid off in the past two years, and all the while the prison population continues to rise.

The state's two biggest female prisons are both in the desert town of Chowchilla. Valley State Prison is designed to hold 2,024 people and is currently housing 3,810. Central California Women's Facility is holding 3,918, far more than its 2,004 capacity. Cells originally built for four people are holding 10. "We've never, ever had the reports of violence among peers that we're seeing now," said Cynthia Chandler, the director of the women's campaign group Justice Now.

"People are dirty, their cells are dirty, they're bleeding on themselves, they're emotional and in a state of despair. It's creating conditions inside a pressure cooker." And, across the border in Arizona, female chain gangs are made to bury the dead and clear wasteland in the desert heat, in a scheme introduced by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in June.

Andrew Coyle, director of the International Centre for Prison Studies at London University, said: "Scandinavian practice in general terms is better than in many other countries. That's because they put fewer people in prison, and the consequence is they can run them more decently and humanely. The criminal justice system is kept for those who need to be locked up for the sake of society.

"Reducing reoffending is a false target. It's based on the premise that sending someone to prison makes them less likely to commit crime. In fact, one of the strongest predictors of future offending is being sent to prison. We know the solutions: more community-based facilities and putting women in small units close to home. The answers are there. They're just not being implemented."

[emphasis by PW]
---
See here the UN document or "Bankok Rules" (PDF): http://www.apt.ch/region/visits/Bangkok%20Rules_en.pdf

See also: article by the Association for the prevention of torture (6 November 2011)

Prison Visits Make Inmates Less Likely To Commit Crimes After Release, Study Finds

2011-12-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

From: Huffington Post:

By John Rudolf
12/7/11
Just a single visit from a family member or a friend can make a big difference in whether or not a prisoner ends up back behind bars after their release, a new study finds.

The study, by researchers with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, determined that prisoners who received at least one personal visit at any time during their incarceration were 13 percent less likely to commit another felony and 25 percent less likely to end up back in prison on a technical parole violation. Data showed that the more visits prisoners received, the lower their chance of re-offending after release.

The study tracked 16,000 prisoners over nearly five years, making it the largest such study of its kind, according to Grant Duwe, director of research for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, who led the research team. The study will be published in the Criminal Justice Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

Duwe said prison officials in Minnesota were already weighing how to apply its results to the state's corrections policies.

"I think the completion of this study gives us some tangible evidence to show that if we can increase visitation, we can give offenders more of the social support they need to succeed," he said.

Several previous, smaller-scale studies have found an even larger correlation between prison visitation and inmates' likelihood of re-offending. But most state prison systems continue to see visitation as a privilege, not a tool to help inmates establish law-abiding lives after their release, Duwe said.

"I think visitation has been largely viewed as a concession that's given to inmates," he said. "I don't know if there has been a great deal of thought given to the public safety benefits that visitation might have."

As the economic slowdown has bitten into state budgets, some prison systems have already altered visitation policies in order to save money. In Minnesota, a temporary government shutdown earlier this year led to the suspension of all prisoner visitation as a cost-saving measure.

In July, Arizona lawmakers imposed a one-time $25 fee on all adult visitors to inmates. Funds from the fee are to be directed to maintenance of state prisons. Middle Ground Prison Reform, an advocacy group, filed suit against the state, calling the fee an "unconstitutional tax."

"If this policy results in delaying or diminishing or eliminating prison visitation for anyone, the state is shooting themselves in the foot in terms of rehabilitation," Donna Hamm, a retired municipal court judge and executive director of the group, said in September, according to the Associated Press. "That's a very short-sighted view of public safety policy."

John Kavanagh, the Republican legislator who wrote the provision, scoffed at the idea that the fee would discourage prison visitors, however.

"If a one-time charge of $25 is enough to dissuade you from visiting your loved one, then I'm wondering how much of a loved one he or she is," he told the Arizona Daily Star.

Duwe declined to comment specifically on the Arizona policy. But he said the results of the Minnesota study clearly suggested that states have a fiscal incentive to encourage visitation, not discourage it.

A single parole violation that returns a released inmate to prison, even briefly, costs upwards of $9,000. A prisoner who commits a new felony and spends additional years behind bars will cost far more.

"The benefits we could see from a reduction in recidivism could vastly outweigh the cost of increasing visitation," he said.

A few states, such as Idaho and Virginia, are already experimenting with a novel and cost-effective way to boost interaction between inmates and their loved ones: internet-based video visitation systems, which have proven popular with inmates and administrators.

Read the rest here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/07/prison-visits-inmates_n_1135288.html

This should make prison administrators think, prisons ought to do much more in encouraging family and friends to visit their loved ones. It is a free means for 'rehabilitation.' But often prisons are built very far away, and having many prisoners earns the prisons more money, and the employees do not want to loose their job. One would nearly think prisons profit from crime, one would think they want it to happen so that more will come to their remote prisons. More prisoners, not visitors, that is... yet,. prisons earm money from visits too (canteen). And from telephone calls...

United States Must Halt Life Without Parole Sentences for Children

2011-12-01T02:43:00.000-08:00

United States Must Halt Life Without Parole Sentences for Children, says Amnesty International

Human Rights Organization Details Stories of Three Young Offenders From Louisiana, Illinois and North Carolina, in New Juvenile Justice Report
Louisiana Case to be Featured in Amnesty International’s Global Write-a-Thon

November 30, 2011
(Washington, D.C.) -- Authorities in the United States must ban the imposition of life without parole sentences against children and review the cases of more than 2,500 prisoners currently serving such sentences to bring the sentences into line with international law, Amnesty International said today in a new report.

"In the United States, people under 18 cannot vote, buy alcohol or lottery tickets or consent to most forms of medical treatment, but they can be sentenced to die in prison for their actions. This needs to change,” said Natacha Mension, U. S. campaigner at Amnesty International (AI).

Children as young as 11 at the time of the crime have faced life imprisonment without parole in the United States – the only country in the world to impose this sentence on children.

Amnesty International’s 34-page report 'This is where I’m going to be when I die': Children facing life imprisonment without the possibility of release in the United States, illustrates the issue through the stories of Christi Cheramie, Jacqueline Montanez and David Young.

In the United States, life without parole can be imposed on juvenile offenders as a mandatory punishment – without consideration of mitigating factors such as history of abuse or trauma, degree of involvement in the crime, mental health status, or amenability to rehabilitation.

"We are not excusing crimes committed by children or minimizing their consequences, but the simple reality is that these sentences ignore the special potential for rehabilitation and change that young offenders have," said Mension.

In May 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court said life without parole is "an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile," as the young offender will serve, on average, more years and a greater percentage of his life in prison than an older offender. "A 16-year-old and a 75-year-old each sentenced to life without parole receive the same punishment in name only," the Court said.

Eighteen months after prohibiting this sentence for non-homicide crimes committed by under-18-year-olds, on November 8, 2011, the Supreme Court agreed to consider this issue in relation to crimes involving murder. It will not issue a decision until the second quarter of 2012 at the earliest.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which entered into force more than two decades ago, expressly prohibits the imposition of life imprisonment without the possibility of release for offenses, however serious, committed by people under 18 years old. All countries except the United States and Somalia have ratified the Convention.

"It is long past time for the United States to ratify the Convention without reservations or other limiting conditions and to fully implement its prohibition on the use of life imprisonment without release against children, including in relation to the cases of those already sentenced," said Mension.

On November 30, Christi Cheramie, who is serving life without parole in Louisiana, will submit an application for executive clemency with the state Board of Pardons. Christi was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release in 1994, when she was 16 years old for the killing of her 18-year-old fiancé’s great aunt.

She pleaded guilty just before her trial in adult court began, fearing she could be sentenced to death if the trial went ahead. Her guilty plea prevents her from directly appealing her conviction or sentence.

A psychiatrist who saw Christi prior to her trial said that she was a "depressed, dependent, and insecure" 16-year-old who "seems to have been fearful of crossing" her fiancé, who she maintains committed the crime. Christi’s childhood was marked by sexual abuse. At the age of 13, she was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic after trying to commit suicide on at least two occasions.

After spending half of her life in prison, Christi believes she has changed in many ways. She has obtained a high school equivalency diploma, a degree in agricultural studies, and teaches a number of classes at the prison. A warden has stated that she is "worthy of a second chance." View a video of Christi’s grandmother and her conversation with Christi here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AHsW9YbP1A&NR=1

Christi will be among 15 people for whom Amnesty International activists worldwide will be taking action as part of Write for Rights – the Global Write-a-Thon on December 3 - 11. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide will be educated about Christi’s case and asked to call on Governor Jindal to help. In the United States, more than 35,000 people are expected to participate in this annual event. http://www.amnestyusa.org/writeathon

Additionally, on Dec. 3 in New Orleans, Amnesty International USA, the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, the Louisiana Interfaith Conference and Citizens for Second Chances will hold an event from 4 to 7 pm with a candlelight vigil, music and speakers focusing on Christi’s case at St. Anna’s Episcopal Church, 1313 Esplanade Avenue. For more information visit www.jjpl.org

A clemency campaign is also pending for a second person whose case is profiled in AI’s report. Jacqueline Montanez is the only woman in Illinois serving a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a crime committed as a child. A victim of child abuse, Jacqueline began abusing drugs and alcohol at the age of nine. Jacqueline’s abuser was her step-father, a gang leader, who also involved her in the drug trade as a very young child and groomed her to be his “little soldier.” After running away from home and joining a rival gang, she and two older women shot and killed two adult male members of her step-father’s gang.

Because she was 15 at the time of the crime and charged with first degree murder, she was automatically tried in adult criminal court. This denied the court system the opportunity of conducting a transfer hearing to determine whether her case ought to have been tried in juvenile court where factors such as her young age, home environment or amenability to rehabilitation would have been considered. Jacqueline was also automatically sentenced to life without parole due to her conviction; the sentencing court had no discretion to consider her history, her age, the circumstances of the offense or her potential for rehabilitation.

Now 35 years old, she expresses deep remorse for her actions and believes that she has grown into a very different person. She has obtained a high school equivalency diploma and has become a certified trainer of service dogs for disabled people. She grieves for her victims and the pain that their families have suffered.

In Illinois, 80 percent of children in prison for life without parole received mandatory sentences; about 82 percent are prisoners of color. That number is even higher in Cook County, where the Montanez case originated. These findings were published by the Illinois Coalition on the Fair Sentencing of Children in its 2008 report Categorically Less Culpable, Children Sentenced to Life Without Parole in Illinois. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/cfjc/jlwop/documents/JLWOP_Report.pdf

Jacqueline’s petition for executive clemency will be submitted to the Illinois governor and the Prisoner Review Board in January 2012.

David Young is one of two teenagers arrested and charged for the murder of Charles Welch in 1997. He was automatically charged in adult criminal court as required by North Carolina law for any criminal offense committed by anyone age 16 or older. Young’s co-defendant, who shot the victim, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 19 to 23 years in prison. David was convicted of first-degree felony murder and was sentenced to life without parole.

Young grew up in a hostile community environment where his parents abused drugs and his stepfather physically abused him and his mother. Now 32 years old, Young obtained his high school equivalency diploma and is in solitary confinement after being stabbed by two prisoners.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom and dignity are denied.

# # #

For a copy of the report, 'This is where I’m going to be when I die': Children facing life imprisonment without the possibility of release in the United States, email Gwen Fitzgerald at gfitzgerald @ aiusa.org. OR Click here to view the report in PDF.

Photos are available online at https://adam.amnesty.org/asset-bank/action/quickSearch?keywords=newsflash+LWOP. For more information, please visit: www.amnestyusa.org.

Pelican Bay is not Enough!! Continuing the Struggle Against Extreme Isolation and Sensory Deprivation

2011-11-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

By Victoria Law
November 16, 2011

http://criticalmassprogress.com/2011/11/16/ci-pelican-bay-is-not-enough-continuing-the-struggle-against-extreme-isolation-and-sensory-deprivation/

Last month, prisoners across California ended a nearly three-week hunger strike. The strikers, who numbered 12,000 at the strike’s peak, had five core demands:

1) Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations;
2) Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria;
3) Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long term solitary confinement;
4) Provide adequate food;
5) Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.

The strike, the second three-week hunger strike to rock California’s prison system this year alone, was called by men in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. The SHU is explicitly designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Men are locked into their cells for at least 22 hours a day. Food is delivered twice a day through a slot in the cell door.

Prison administrators place men in the SHU either for a fixed term for violating a prison rule or for an indeterminate term because they were “validated” as prison gang members. Prisoners who have been “validated” as gang members are released from the SHU into the general prison population only if they “debrief” or provide information incriminating other prisoners. Debriefing can be dangerous to both the prisoner who debriefs and his family on the outside. In addition, prisoners are often falsely identified as gang members by others who debrief in order to escape the SHU. One does not necessarily need to be a gang member to be sent to the SHU: jailhouse lawyers and others who challenge inhumane prison conditions are disproportionately sent to the SHU.

Nearly three weeks after the strike began, the CDCR promised both the hunger strikers and members of the outside mediation team to review every single SHU placement under new criteria. In response, the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay ended their strike on October 13th. Two days later, hunger strikers at Calipatria State Prison halted their strike, stating that they were enabling prisoners to regain their strength.

But the struggle over the SHU is only the beginning.

Laura Magnani is the regional director of the American Friends Service Committee and served as a mediator during negotiations between the hunger strikers and the CDCR. She points out that, in 2008, 14,500 people in California’s state prisons were held in some form of solitary confinement. Of those, only 3,500 were in Security Housing Units. The remaining 11,000 are held in other forms of isolation, such as Administrative Segregation. The promised changes to SHU policy will do little to ameliorate their own torture. Once the changes have been drafted, reviewed and approved, she said, advocates and supporters need to work to expand these new policies to non-SHU isolation units. (1)

Conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation are not unique to California. Over the last 25 to 30 years, the use of extended solitary confinement has become more routine in U.S. prisons.

In 1986, the federal prison at Lexington, Kentucky, opened a control unit specifically for women political prisoners in 1986. It was built underground and entirely white. Women were prohibited from hanging anything on the white walls, causing them to begin hallucinating black spots and strings on the walls and floors. Their sole contact with prison staff came in the form of voices addressing them over loudspeakers. The unit was shut down in 1988 after an outside campaign and a court decision that determined their placement unconstitutional. The practice of solitary confinement continues today, however, with jailhouse lawyers and other incarcerated activists often targeted. (2)

Today, there are 20,000 people held in supermax prisons, institutions designed to permanently isolate each prisoner for the duration of his or her sentence. Supermax prisoners are confined to small cells 24 hours a day. Many of the cells have no windows and are soundproof. Visits, phone calls and mail from family and friends are severely restricted; reading material is censored. Exercise is a solitary pursuit in a small cage in a yard.(3)

Approximately 80,000 people are in some form of solitary confinement across the United States. (http://www.alternet.org/rights/146497/torture_at_home_documentary_on_solitary_confinement_in_us_prisons_misses_the_mark?page=entire)

In 1996, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which manages the federal prison system, created the Special Administrative Measures (SAMS). Under SAMS, a prisoner is held in 23 to 24 hour solitary confinement. All of his mail is monitored and censored. He is only allowed contact with immediate family members. Under SAMS, they are not allowed to reveal their loved one’s condition or the conditions of his confinement. SAMs, which are considered “administrative,” not punitive, can be imposed on a prisoner who had been classified as violent for a maximum of four months. After September 11th, the time limit was expanded. The Attorney General can now place a person under SAMS for an entire year. When that year is over, he can renew the prisoner’s SAMS status. Prisoners can be and have been placed under SAMs during their pre-trial detention. Fahad Hashmi, a U.S. citizen accused of providing material support to terrorists, spent three years under SAMs before he even went to trial. At his sentencing, his speech was rapid. When asked to slow down, he apologized, noting that, because of his three years under SAMS, he has not had many occasions to talk to other people.(4)

The impact of extreme solitary confinement is not limited to Fahad Hashmi. Damion Echols was exonerated after spending 18 years in solitary confinement. During those 18 years, he had only walked in full restraints. Upon his release, he had to relearn how to walk. He also had to relearn how to see past a few feet; after 18 years, his eyes had become unused to seeing past the few feet inside his cell.(5)

Even a few weeks in solitary confinement can have drastic repercussions. Sarah Pender, held in solitary confinement in Indiana for three years, recently wrote about another woman on the solitary housing unit: “Just yesterday [she] was writing on the walls with her own blood. Before she cut her arms, she strangled herself with a shoestring until the guards found her purple. Before that, she used her fingernails to rip chunks of flesh out of her face. She had been held here for two months after essentially sassing a guard.” (6)

People in the U.S. are increasingly recognizing the use of solitary as a means of legalized torture. In 1988, continued public pressure and advocacy led to the shutting down of the control unit at FCI Lexington. Today, activists, advocates, family members and community members are fighting to draw attention to these atrocities and publicly pressure authorities to either release individual prisoners into general population or to drastically change procedures around solitary confinement.

The ACLU and Indiana Protection Services Agency filed a class-action lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Corrections on behalf of all prisoners held in solitary housing units that suffered from mental illness. The Federal District Court for Southern Indiana heard the case over the summer and is expected to make a decision at the end of this year.(7) Pender, who notes that her three-year stay in isolation is “one of the longest periods a woman has ever been held in isolation for a single, non-violent act in Indiana history,” filed a civil suit in April 2011 against specific prison officials raising similar claims regarding SHU conditions, lack of appropriate mental health care, and the mental health effects of solitary confinement.

Other tactics have also been used to raise awareness and outrage around solitary confinement: In October 2009, Theaters Against the War, Educators for Civil Liberties and the Muslim Justice Initiative, along with individuals concerned about the human rights atrocities inflicted upon Fahad Hashmi by the SAMS, began holding weekly vigils outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. For seven months, these vigils continued with opera singers, theater artists, human rights and social justice activists supporting Hashmi’s friends, family and immediate community. As Hashmi’s trial neared, a call went out to fill the courtroom with supporters. The government responded by first asking for anonymity and extra security for the jury, thus implying that the jurors had reason to fear Hashmi’s supporters. It then dropped three of its charges, offering a 10 to 15 year sentence instead of a potential 70 year sentence if Hashmi pled guilty to the last remaining count of material support. The number of friends and supporters filled not only the courtroom but three overflow courtrooms on the day of Hashmi’s sentencing.(8)

During the hunger strike started at Pelican Bay, family members, advocates, and concerned community members across the country acted to draw attention to the hunger strike. In Oakland, supporters held a weekly vigil on Thursday evenings. On July 9, 2011, supporters organized demonstrations in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Nine days later, 200 family members, lawyers, and outside supporters from across California converged upon CDCR headquarters in Sacramento, delivered a petition of over 7,500 signatures in support of the hunger strikers, and then marched to Governor Brown’s office to demand answers. That same day, supporters in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York City, and Philadelphia also held solidarity rallies.

Compelled by the hunger strike, its ensuing publicity, and community pressure on legislators, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Commission held a hearing on SHU conditions on August 23. Former SHU prisoners, family members, attorneys, advocates, and psychiatrists testified about the need for substantial changes to SHU policies and practices. When the hunger strike resumed again in September, so too did the actions to keep the strike—and the conditions prompting it—in public consciousness.

On October 13, 2011, the day that the hunger strike ended at Pelican Bay, students, attorneys, civil rights activists, and family members convened at Brooklyn College for a one-day conference that connected the human rights atrocities in the federal prison system with the struggles of the prison justice movement. Attendees learned from each other’s struggles and experiences and built bridges between movements that often work separately.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, 60 people braved the November rain to rally outside the NC Division of Prisons. The protest was co-organized by anti-prison activists and members of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, a group whose imprisoned members have been harassed and segregated within the NC prison system. Outraged by this harassment, the continued targeting of politically-active North Carolina prisoners, and the recent hunger strike in California, the rally focused on solitary confinement with banners stating, “Against Solitary—Love for All Prison Rebels,” “Solitary is Torture” and “Against Prisons.”

Protesters marched form the Division of Prisons to the rear of the men’s Central Prison. Although police prevented the march from reaching the prison fence, the prisoners could see the protest from the windows and, in response, banged on the glass.

Concerns about solitary confinement are not limited to activists, advocates and family members. The European Convention on Human Rights holds that the extreme isolation in ADX Florence amounts to torture, stating that “complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason.” On October 18, 2011, Juan Mendez, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, presented a written report on solitary confinement in the U.S. to the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee. He stated that solitary confinement “can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles. Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, supermax, the hole, secure housing unit…whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by states as a punishment or extortion (of information) technique.” He called for a ban on any type of solitary confinement exceeding 15 days.

What does all this mean for the 80,000 people isolated in extreme solitary confinement right now?
“It’s nearing the end of 2011,” wrote Todd Ashker, one of the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay. “How is it that thousands of prisoners in SHU-type units across the country are being subject to conditions the International Courts have condemned as torture?” (10)

On the day that the Pelican Bay hunger strike ended, Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights exhorted the audience at Brooklyn College: “We need to build on the momentum of Pelican Bay, Bradley Manning and other cases.” (11)

Let us take these words—and the organizing of those both in and out of prison—as a call to action.

End Notes

(1) Laura Magnani, telephone interview with author, October 14, 2011.
(2) Cassandra Shaylor, “ ‘It’s Like Living in a Black Hole’: Women of Color and Solitary Confinement in the Prison-Industrial Complex” in Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader, ed. Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 320. The court determined the women’s placement unconstitutional since they were housed in the control unit because of their political beliefs. It did NOT rule that control units constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Court of Appeals then ruled that prisons are free to use political associations and beliefs to justify different and harsher treatment.
(3) Rachael Kamel and Bonnie Kerness, The Prison Inside the Prison: Control Units, Supermax Prisons, and Devices of Torture: A Justice Visions Briefing Paper. Philadelphia, PA: American Friends Service Committee, 2003. 2.
(4) Fahad Hashmi allowed a visiting acquaintance to store waterproof socks, ponchos and raincoats in his London apartment. Prosecutors argued that these socks, ponchos and raincoats later ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. Hashmi was sentenced to 15 years in ADX Florence. His SAMS status remains.
(5)David Fathi, Roundtable: Conditions of Confinement, The Civil Rights Crisis in the Federal System Post 9/11, Brooklyn College, October 13, 2011.
(6)Sarah Jo Pender, “The Annals of Solitary Confinement,” Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison 24, Fall/Winter 2011.
(7) Pender, “The Annals of Solitary Confinement.”http://chronicle.com/article/My-Student-the-Terrorist/126937/
(8) Fahad Hashmi was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College. Only weeks before the conference, it was revealed that the NYPD had been monitoring Muslim students and student groups at Brooklyn College.
(9) Letter from Todd Ashker to author, dated September 25, 2011.
(10) Pardiss Kebriaei, Roundtable: Conditions of Confinement. The Civil Rights Crisis in the Federal System Post 9/11, Brooklyn College, October 13, 2011. For more about Bradley Manning’s case, see www.bradleymanning.org

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer and mother. She is the author of “Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women” (PM Press 2009), the editor of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison and a co-founder of Books Through Bars – NYC. She is currently working on transforming “Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind,” a zine series on how radical movements can support the families in their midst, into a book.

We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units

2011-11-13T02:34:00.000-08:00

A discussion in the wake of the Aug. 23 legislative hearing

From: SF Bay View, November 11, 2011

by J. Heshima Denham, Zaharibu Dorrough and Kambui Robinson of the NCTT Corcoran Security Housing Unit (SHU)

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. … We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Written Oct. 12, 2011 – These sage words by Dr. King are both appropriate to the discussion we’d like to have on indeterminate SHU confinement and cautionary as to who we are and what we allow as a society in these troubled times. This second point is very relevant to this discussion and we hope you’ll stick with us, as the subject matter is both broad and disturbing; it requires us to share some inconvenient truths.
[1]
At the rally in support of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s historic hearing on the hunger strike against SHU torture Aug. 23, Amber, the sister of a SHU prisoner told the crowd: “My brother has been in Pelican Bay SHU for the last 10 years. I’m here today to be the voice, not only for him, but for all of the prisoners who are suffering in the SHU and for all of the prisons in California. There are a lot of questions that I want answered. I want to know what our elected officials are going to do to change what’s being done? Why is it 30 days later (since the end of the first round of the hunger strike) and still nothing has been done when the CDC agreed to part of the prisoners’ demands? I want to know why my brother is tortured on a daily basis year after year. Why is he not fed correctly and why is he so pale and skinny? Why does my mom have to cry every time she goes to see him? Seeing everybody that has come out today just lights my fire, because I know that I am not alone and I can let him know that he is not alone.” – Photo and quote: Revolution Newspaper

Security Housing Units (SHUs) like those in Pelican Bay, Tehachapi and this one here in Corcoran are torture units. They are used to indefinitely house human beings in solitary confinement based on an administrative determination that they are “gang members” with impetus towards breaking their minds in hopes of eliciting information and coercing them into becoming informants or active agents in the state.

These units are the tombs of not only alleged “gang members” but political and politicized prisoners, imprisoned human rights activists and jailhouse lawyers alike, most anyone who, in the sole determination of institutional gang investigators and administrators, is not content to submit passively to his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.
These units are the tombs of not only alleged “gang members” but political and politicized prisoners, imprisoned human rights activists and jailhouse lawyers.

The U.S. and many of its media outlets, such as The New York Times and San Diego Union Tribune, prior to the U.S. War on Terror, routinely criticized China, Turkey, Syria and other nations for holding prisoners in indefinite solitary confinement under conditions of constant illumination, sensory deprivation etc. for expressing contrary political views. They universally condemned the practices as torture, citing the United Nations Human Rights Commission Treaty. Their hypocrisy was of course revealed after the policies of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and numerous CIA blacksite prisons was exposed.

Yet what has been America’s dirty little secret is that years before Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, they were boiling men alive at Pelican Bay SHU, they were holding murderous “blood sport” style bouts here at Corcoran SHU and they had been holding people with left-wing political ideologies as “gang members” for decades in sensory deprivation torture units at Pelican Bay, Corcoran and Tehachapi SHUs. Yes, indefinite solitary confinement and constant illumination is being used right now in California SHU units, in conjunction with a program of systematic isolation and experimental behavior modification to torture prisoners every day, without end.

The California and U.S. Supreme Courts, in blatant indifference to international and constitutional law, have repeatedly refused to intervene in most cases on behalf of prisoners in Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs who’ve lived in solitary confinement under constant illumination and daily psychological stressors for 10, 20, 30 and even 40 years straight. This is gross hypocrisy wherein your nation is torturing its citizens in your names.

The “United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment” defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
[2]
Banners at the rally by hunger strikers’ families and supporters held on the capitol steps prior to the Aug. 23 hearing spoke truth to power.
This virtually defines the validation, indeterminate SHU confinement and debriefing processes, which are all interconnected. We are routinely told, quite frankly, at ICC (Institutional Classification Committee) hearings, “You’ll only get out of SHU if you parole, debrief or die”; at parole board hearings the line is no different: The panel of law enforcement officials states, “If you want a parole date, you may want to think about debriefing.”

When, after serving 24 years, most of that in these indeterminate SHU torture units, for a crime where he was simply a 16-year-old bystander and had not had a single rules violation in over a decade, had family and community support and several job offers, Sondai Ellis was told that very thing as he was denied parole again. I was, and continue to be, so furious that it is only through the discipline and adherence to principled conduct instilled in me by brothers like Sondai that I’ve been capable of keeping that fury in check at such bald-faced injustice.

To debrief one must become an informant, an agent of the state, and decades of torture and withholding of freedom are strong state sanctions to compel some of us to make something up or simply parrot what we are told to say to get out of SHU or support a law enforcement agenda. In at least two recent online articles, we see debriefers doing just this: actually advocating the merits of the very torture units that reduced them to broken men and made them thralls of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) and its various units and affiliates. They – the Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI), Investigations Services Unit (ISU), prison guards etc. – are the ones who have an economic and political interest in maintaining the symbolism of these torture units as the final abode of “predatory gang leaders and organized criminals.”

The U.N. Human Rights Commission has stated prolonged solitary confinement for purposes of extracting information is prohibited as torture. SHUs are by definition torture units and specialty, experimental, ultra-supermax isolation units like Pelican Bay SHU’s D-Short Corridor and Corcoran SHU’s 4B1L-C-Section short corridor are specifically engineered to warp reality for purposes of breaking men’s minds.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission has stated prolonged solitary confinement for purposes of extracting information is prohibited as torture. SHUs are by definition torture units.

Torture, no matter the supposed justification, is never an acceptable practice for a humane society. The U.N. Convention Against Torture states, “No exceptionable circumstances whatsoever, whether a state or threat of war or political emergency, may be invoked as a reason for torture.” As it stands, your correctional department, courts, some of your elected officials, and all law enforcement agencies do feel torture is justified as long as it’s applied to those they deem “gang members.”
Your correctional department, courts, some of your elected officials, and all law enforcement agencies do feel torture is justified as long as it’s applied to those they deem “gang members.”

But there is a much more insidious socio-economic and political motivation for the maintenance and expansion of SHU torture units and indeterminate SHU confinement based on “gang” validation. It is sustained by manipulating your perception of truth and humanity and by controlling your perception of these things. The prison industrialists dictate your actions, reactions and inaction to their impact on your lives and communities.

As you may know, we embarked on a historic 24-day hunger strike in July and at this writing are 17 days into a second hunger strike that began on Sept. 26 in solidarity with the Pelican Bay SHU D-Corridor collective and the five core demands recognizing our human rights. We were joined by some 6,600 other prisoners across the state, 12,000 in this second effort and countless others across the nation, and we garnered the support of principled people all over the world.

On Aug. 23, a hearing was held in response to those issues. I want to take this time to use some of the distortions, misrepresentations of fact and outright lies by CDCR Undersecretary Scott Kernan, a key prison industrialist, to illustrate just what we’re talking about here. There is an articulable basis why state-sanctioned torture units are maintained in California and throughout the U.S. And before we get into Mr. Kernan’s comments, it is necessary for you to have a clear understanding of what they are so you can understand why he would contradict himself and openly lie to a legislative oversight committee.

The purpose of SHU torture units – and “gang” validations resulting in indeterminate SHU confinement – is to ensure your financial and political support for the expansion and maintenance of the prison industrial complex as a viable business model by maximizing your fear and capitalizing on your ignorance. The foundational cornerstone of their success is convincing you that “gang members are depraved, inhuman monsters hell bent on the rape, murder and predation of innocent people,” and only they, the “gang experts,” know who these monsters are and how best to “protect” you from them.

The purpose of SHU torture units – and “gang” validations resulting in indeterminate SHU confinement – is to ensure your financial and political support for the expansion and maintenance of the prison industrial complex as a viable business model by maximizing your fear and capitalizing on your ignorance.

These so-called malevolent, irrationally violent and predatory organized “gangs” are the source of all of society’s ills and the very origins of crime in our communities. By creating these torture units and proclaiming they are the abodes of “the worst of the worst,” they have a symbolic manifestation of the validity of their claims.
[3]

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, chair of Public Safety Committee, speaks at the rally before convening his hearing on prison torture in the SHUs.
No one can refute their accounts or characterizations because transparency is non-existent. Prisoners have no voice. The CCPOA successfully lobbied to ban media interviews with prisoners so the public is left to a unilateral, state-sponsored view of prison conditions and their discontents. This allows them the ability to perpetuate the myth of the inhuman “gang member” unchallenged and, with tacit media support, to dehumanize an ever-growing segment of the underclass.

Have you not noticed how your local news reports on arrestees or incidents in these communities? If someone is arrested for DUI, a drive-by or petty theft, he or she is paraded on the news and the first identification made is “he’s a validated gang member.” When incidents occur in or around our children’s schools, the school is put on “lockdown,” a term derived from the California prison system to denote a prison yard being locked down after a riot or other incident.

These terms, “gang” and “gang member,” automatically conjure images of innocent drive-by shooting victims and prison rapes inspired by “Oz” and cinematic visions, divorcing these men and women from the human condition, dehumanizing them. These people, more often than not, were saddled with these characterizations because of the communities they come from and may well have never committed a violent or predatory act in their lives.

But you don’t know that. All you know is what you’ve been told by the TV anchor, police or CDCR spokesman. They know that because they’ve used millions of your tax dollars to engineer it that way.

The truth of the matter is there are no malevolent, irrationally violent predatory gangs roving the streets of your cities or the prison yards of CDCR, only desperate men and women forced to the bottom rung of society through institutional disparities in economic and race-based distribution of educational, employment and empowerment opportunities at virtually every point of human activity in the U.S.

Do gangs exist? Of course, but that’s not the relevant question. Where are they prevalent and why do they exist? This is what is of note. “Gangs” and, more centrally, gang violence are prevalent primarily in underclass – poor – communities.

The national unemployment rate – not counting the underemployed or those who’ve stopped looking – stands at 9.1 percent, yet in the New Afrikan (Black) community, it’s 17 percent and in the Latino community it’s 14.5 percent. Those without a high school diploma stand at 16 percent unemployed while those with a Bachelor’s Degree a mere 1 percent.

New Afrikans and Latinos make up 90 percent of the prison population but a scant 26 percent of the national population. The origin of crime is not gangs. Gangs are a social symptom of that origin. The origin of all crime is the disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and opportunity in our society.

The origin of crime is not gangs. Gangs are a social symptom of that origin. The origin of all crime is the disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and opportunity in our society.

This is not by chance or happenstance. It is by design. Wage-based employment and entrepreneurship are the only ways to “legally” create wealth in this society. When social conditions are such that a community contains a large population of surplus labor – either they are unemployed due to their lack of education or marketable skills, or the market simply cannot sustain that population of workers – the only alternative to survive is the underground economy, be that illicit services such as narcotics, the sex trade and gambling or predatory crimes such as extortion, robbery and identity theft.

There is a corresponding sense of socio-political impotence which accompanies the innate insecurity of poverty. Young men and women who have no power, no hope, no impact on their world form community-based organizations to fill that socio-political void in their existence. Those the state calls “gangs” and has decided to wage “war” on them, only furthering the isolation.

Young men and women who have no power, no hope, no impact on their world form community-based organizations to fill that socio-political void in their existence.

One of the reasons so few people vote in underclass communities is these disparities are institutional and systemic to U.S. capitalist economics. No matter who’s in office, their plight doesn’t change. Because these communities are a marginal constituency, public officials extend a corresponding indifference to their plight. [4]

Families and supporters of prisoners from across California held a rally prior to the Aug. 23 hearing called by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the torturous solitary confinement in California SHUs.

Instead of “protecting and serving” those communities, law enforcement, judicial, legislative and correctional officers all too commonly have a containment, suppression and adversarial relationship with those communities and those who come from them. Yet the bell-curve theories and notions that young men and women want to stand on a street corner selling crack or want to risk their lives and freedom by engaging in unprovoked gang violence are simply untrue.

You pick any prisoner in these SHU units validated as a “gang member” and offer him a job making $20 an hour, and I can guarantee you he won’t break the law. But the environment in these communities and most assuredly the environment in CDCR prisons are not structured to produce such success or opportunity, which brings me to my next point:

The California corrections system is an environment designed and maintained by its administrators. Thus, any failures must be attributed to those who have precluded an environment for success. CDCR effectively retards rehabilitation especially among SHU prisoners – those who by the state’s own admission most need rehabilitation – by withdrawing the vital tech-based vocational training and higher educational opportunity needed to compete in today’s high tech world. It was primarily through the successful efforts of the CCPOA that funding through Pell grants for higher education was taken from prisoners.
You pick any prisoner in these SHU units validated as a “gang member” and offer him a job making $20 an hour, and I can guarantee you he won’t break the law.

Of course, what followed this repeal of the inmate bill of rights was an unprecedented boom in prison building and a population expansion by 800 percent in the last 20 years. Racial antagonisms are encouraged so as to preclude broad class cooperation amongst prisoners like the unprecedented unity shown statewide in the recent hunger strike.

Underdevelopment while in prison, coupled with an emphasis on seeking most any impetus for “violation” by parole officers once out of prison, is designed to preclude successful re-integration into society, maximize recidivism rates, and undermine the underclass communities from which those ex-offenders hail – all to maintain the steady social dysfunction and economic desperation in these family units so a consistent flow of bodies is exiting these communities to enter our jails and prisons, court systems and probation departments, ensuring a recession-proof industry of profit and expansion for the prison market and those who depend on your tax dollars to sustain their privilege.

The very structure of CDCR regulations is designed to promote dependency, destroy ingenuity and self-determination and deter unity. They actually have rules which bar prisoners from running a business, which always boggled my mind in an economically depressed recessionary capitalist cycle. If there are prisoners with the insight, talent and entrepreneurial acumen to make a meaningful contribution to this state’s economy and job market, men and women who the courts have determined owe some debt to society, why would you codify a basis for them not doing so?
The very structure of CDCR regulations is designed to promote dependency, destroy ingenuity and self-determination and deter unity.

Outside of the same “potential for impropriety” rhetoric they use to justify accepting unsubstantiated confidential information and mere suspicion as a basis for SHU confinement, there exists no justification for such a regulation. The only basis that follows reason is to prevent independence and promote dependency on the state, thus promoting institutionalization.

If you combine this with the psycho-social decimation of men’s minds resulting from prolonged and, in some cases, endless isolation in conditions such as these, is it any wonder psychologists universally agree this type of torture effectively destroys one’s ability to function in society? Which is the point.

As we’ve stated before, the modern criminal justice system – and correctional departments in particular – are the biggest conflicts of interest in U.S. history. Those entrusted with reducing the number of criminal offenders and protecting public safety have their potential profit margin directly attached to maximizing the number of offenders under their control at any given time.

Those entrusted with reducing the number of criminal offenders and protecting public safety have their potential profit margin directly attached to maximizing the number of offenders under their control at any given time.

This is why the CCPOA fought so hard to stop out-of-state transfers of prisoners to reduce overcrowding. The more prisoners under their control, the larger their budgets, the greater their salaries and benefits, and the more overtime hours they can bill to your tax dollars.

But most vitally, the more prisoners held and for ever greater durations, the more ensured they are of their long-term job security no matter the fragility of the economy in this current crisis. To be sure, an economic downturn to the rest of us is an economic upturn for those in the prison industry. It means an inequitable increase in human commodities: prisoners.
An economic downturn to the rest of us is an economic upturn for those in the prison industry. It means an inequitable increase in human commodities: prisoners.

According to CDCR, they spend an average $78,000 to house us in these torture unit cells each year. Perhaps a little more due to the added isolation features in 4B1L-C-Section and D-Corridor. We assure you it does not cost $78K to feed us the two small trays and sack lunch we receive each day or to keep this light burning 24 hours or power our small 13-inch TVs.

Besides being escorted in chains to the K-9 style dog cages for yard two to three times a week and five minutes in the shower three times a week, we never leave these cells. So I assure you that money is not being spent on prisoners being housed in the SHU. No, it’s spent on guards – on their salaries, benefits, equipment, training, guns and bullets – NOT US. The guard working the SHU makes the most money and with all the overtime they have action at, they can in essence write their own checks on your buck and at the expense of our minds, our bodies and, sometimes it feels, our very souls. [5]

The CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association), the prison guards’ union, considers the California State Capitol in Sacramento its turf. It is the state’s most powerful lobby. No governor has dared challenge its power for decades, but the hunger strikers dared.
During the Aug. 23 legislative hearing, the CDCR panel representative, Undersecretary of Operations Scott Kernan, made such baseless, overly simplistic and outright false statements concerning prison life and conditions related to SHU and so-called “gangs” that they MUST be debunked with the truth. He stated “gangs” were responsible for “ordering ‘rapes’” in prison and are the primary threat for such heinous acts. This is not only an outright lie, but in fact quite the opposite is true.

For the vast majority of those housed in these SHUs, and virtually ALL those in these indeterminate SHU torture units, the forced sexual subjugation of anyone, not to mention another human in these conditions, is not simply frowned upon by SHU prisoners but forcefully opposed. Mr. Kernan’s assertion that men housed here would even condone such sickness is a testament to the fear and dehumanization-based rhetoric which has become the basis for prison industrialist propaganda over the past 20 years and is an insult to the humanity of all of us housed here.

We in the NCTT Cor-SHU collectively have over 100 years of experience existing in the most violent and reactionary prisons in California and can say with definitive confidence that the vast majority of the “8,000 assaults and stabbings the department has each year” has little to do with gangs, as Mr. Kernan states, and everything to do with overcrowded facilities and limited space.

Be it a dispute on the basketball or handball court, an unpaid gambling or dope debt, a cross word said in frustration at overcrowded conditions taken as disrespect, etc., these things have little to do with “gangs.” And in those instances where a gang member may be involved in a personal dispute – and according to CDCR everyone in CDCR runs with some gang – they report or record it as “gang related” when the “gang” in fact has nothing to do with the initial incident.

He went on to state “millions of tax dollars were ‘wasted’ each year, and ‘gangs’ would be identified as the primary problem.” Mr. Kernan has no factual basis for this statement. I can’t even conceive of the rubric by which he would venture this opinion when targeting educational and economic development programs in underclass communities and amongst criminal offenders has proven an effective means by which to reduce both predatory and market-based crime rates and reduce recidivism amongst prisoners, yet funding for such initiatives, due primarily to lobbying efforts by the CCPOA and their political cabal, has been repeatedly diverted to prison budgets under the auspices of public safety, an oxymoronic application of the term if ever there was one.

Mr. Kernan went on to state it’s “only 3,000 validated SHU prisoners in a population of 165,000 – that’s a very small number.” The Marquis de Sade is said to have tortured some 2,000 prisoners out of the 100,000 that passed through Elba – before honing his skills on women – when he was a gaoler (jailer) there. No one in the French aristocracy minded De Sade’s dalliances with prisoners much either. It’s this type of thinking that led to the use of CIA blacksites in Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt and, yes, Libya under Qaddafi to imprison “under special conditions” terror “suspects” and torture them for years, continuing still, in the U.S. “war on terror.”
[6]

SHU survivor Jitu Sadiki speaks at the rally prior to the Ammiano hearing Aug. 23. – Photo: Wanda Sabir
Three thousand torture victims in a population of 165,000 is 3,000 too many. Mr. Kernan went on to state, “We don’t allow media to talk to individual inmates for fear of their sensationalizing their crimes, like Charles Manson or Scott Peterson” – a patently absurd notion he knows full well was untrue. First of all, it was the media that “sensationalized” Manson and Peterson’s cases, not Manson and Peterson themselves.

But, more importantly, no one here wants to “sensationalize” their criminal convictions or past lifestyles. In fact there is a significant segment of the indeterminate SHU population, such as the NCTT, the Freedom, Justice and Human Rights Initiative, George Jackson University etc., who have dedicated their lives to not simply atoning for the damage to our communities as a result of our ignorance and lack of consciousness in the past, but putting forward meaningful programs and initiatives to improve life in those communities, such as those mentioned above.

The only prisoners in SHU that Mr. Kernan allowed the media access to, and the only prisoners such media outlets as the Sacramento Bee seem to be interested in quoting are debriefers, informants and agents of the state. Mr. Kernan did not allow media access to the D-Short Corridor collective, like Sitawa Dewberry, Todd Ashker or Mutope Crawford, or the 4B1L-C-Section collective because he did not want politically and socially conscious prisoners articulating the true basis of SHU and reason for the hunger strikes and the inescapable deteriorating psychological effects of SHU.

This is simply another example of state controlled media in a society that purports itself to be “free and open,” yet another manifestation of CDCR’s successful gambit to monopolize the conversation. I found it ironic that Mr. Kernan attempted to dismiss and redirect the blatant human rights violations which torture units represent by stating “the violence the gangs perpetuate is the human rights violation,” when the vast majority of the “8,000 assaults and stabbings” occurring in the modern CDCR are occurring on “sensitive needs yards” (SNYs) by the very debriefers and protective custody prisoners IGI has relied on, or broken, to manufacture uncorroborated and unsubstantiated “confidential information chronos” to put, and keep other prisoners in indefinite SHU confinement.

To be sure, the most violent “gang” in CDCR is “2-5” – half of “5-0,” the “prison gang” made up of debriefers and informants who directly work for IGI, ISU, SSU (Special Services Unit) and other law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Kernan was adamant that the courts have upheld the validation process and “though harsh, the SHU is not torture.” We’ve established without doubt this IS torture, so that brooks no comment.

But as to the comments on the courts, that’s not entirely true either. California courts, most judges having been elected with the backing of CCPOA lobbying dollars, rarely uphold the Constitution where prisoners, and especially SHU prisoners, are seeking human rights protection. But there are exceptions. For example, in the Koch v. Lewis case that the Supreme Court took up to address the equally harsh SMU II torture unit in Florence, Arizona, the court found that Koch’s solitary confinement violated his right to due process under the 14th Amendment, which is applicable to states because there was no evidence that Koch had committed any overt act to warrant such torture. The claim that he was an Aryan Brotherhood member was insufficient.

Substantive due process requires that evidence used must bear a logical relation to the specific deprivations. As Judge Moran stated, “The labeling of plaintiff Koch as a ‘gang member’ does not itself create legal concerns. Rather it is the placement in SMU II as a result of the alleged association that is constitutionally significant.” After hearing evidence of SMU conditions – identical to California SHU conditions – and the psychological harm Koch and all prisoners faced, the court not only found a significant liberty deprivation but also that the very practice of sending inmates to supermax torture units based on status alone, with no charges or evidence of misconduct, violated due process.

The court concluded that there must be some evidence of misconduct, some overt gang-related act, to justify placing Koch in SMU II for an indefinite – and very likely permanent – term. Yet, as Mr. Kernan stated, virtually lifelong supermax detention for alleged “gang members” in U.S. domestic prisons continues to be judged constitutional here in California despite the ruling in the Griffith case. CDCR still has not released him from SHU despite multiple rulings to do so.

It’s not that they, or he, does not know these torture units violate basic tenets of humaneness; they simply have an overriding interest in their maintenance: money and control. Your money, their control. This assertion by Mr. Kernan that these torture units are not torture units is so outrageous and insulting, it recalls Bush era admonitions that waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and CIA blacksites in foreign countries weren’t torturous either. It is an absurdity, and a dangerous one.
This assertion by Mr. Kernan that these torture units are not torture units is so outrageous and insulting, it recalls Bush era admonitions that waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and CIA blacksites in foreign countries weren’t torturous either.

Mr. Kernan’s dogged assertion that “gangs” and more certainly those of us housed in these SHU torture units are the source of perpetual violence in CDCR ignores the inescapable reality of gross overcrowding, intentional underdevelopment and dependency and the structural conditions they’ve created in California prisons, which is the actual origin of prison violence. And until these structural fallacies are addressed, violence in California prisons will continue no matter how many prisoners are consigned to these torture units, and he KNOWS this. [7]

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano leaves the rally to convene his hearing on solitary confinement and related issues raised initially by prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU, whose hunger strike was joined by 12,000 other prisoners simultaneously. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Mr. Kernan stated the process being considered by “all state law enforcement, CCPOA, police, labor unions, national experts and the legislature itself” would allow prisoners to “earn a way out of the system by behavior and require the department to document when we feel it is not the case.” There are four things wrong with this approach:

1) the determining body developing the policy, outside of the legislature, consists exclusively of proponents of the prison industrial complex. Thus, whatever policy is developed will reflect the same draconian, profit-driven inhumanity that’s subjected us to these torture units thus far for decades without end;

2) most of us have not had any rules violations reports in decades. What do we need to “earn” through our “behavior” that’s not already been earned through a years-long proven record of disciplinary free conduct? Or must we subject ourselves to the behavior modification experiments developed in the Marion federal torture unit?

3) indeterminate SHU confinement cannot be allowed to continue to be based on what this department does or does not “feel is the case.” The primary issue here is the arbitrary nature of gang validation and subsequent indeterminate SHU confinement;

4) what Mr. Kernan is suggesting here is no different than the sham six-year inactive review that’s already in place.

Mr. Kernan stated the CDCR gang validation policy is “intended to protect inmates we are charged with and staff,” yet anyone who’s on this side of the door knows that’s a flat out lie. The CDCR gang policy is intended to maintain their control of prison budgets, silence prisoner critics, preclude prisoner unity and continue to scapegoat indeterminate SHU prisoners who’ve not had a single instance of documented misconduct in decades as a basis for extorting billions of taxpayer dollars through over-exaggerating the threat posed by prisoners housed indefinitely in SHU on the basis of gang validations.

The CDCR gang policy is intended to maintain their control of prison budgets, silence prisoner critics, preclude prisoner unity and continue to scapegoat indeterminate SHU prisoners who’ve not had a single instance of documented misconduct in decades.

As I’ve stated previously, if prisoners, staff and public safety were truly CDCR’s motive force, they would have developed a prison environment and programs geared toward true rehabilitation and successful reintegration and performance in society upon release. Such an environment runs contrary to their economic and political interests and unfortunately against a significant number of the peoples’ desire for vengeance against perceived offenders.

Now then, a particularly distressing lie Mr. Kernan relayed to the public safety panel was that “all evidence used to validate is corroborated.” Simply put, this is a flat out lie. There is no corroboration via independent sources of information of confidential informants’ statements or confidential informant chronos known as “1030s.” Why he would utter a lie that is so easily debunked is truly beyond me. [8]

A SHU survivor addresses the Aug. 23 rally outside the capitol in Sacramento.

To give you an example of what Mr.Kernan and the IGI deem corroboration, they have little boxes on the 1030 chrono listed a)-f) which state why they consider such a source reliable. In a 2008 1030 used to deny a validated indeterminate SHU prisoner “inactive status,” a debriefer – who was briefly housed with the brother – told IGI the individual spoke of the merits of socialism, the history of political resistance to racism and socio-economic inequality in Amerika, and of the validity of the political and socio-economic views of Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh and George Lester Jackson. The IGI told the debriefer that the prisoner was providing “BGF education,” to which the debriefer quickly agreed and parroted what his IGI handler told him to.

Because the same prisoner wrote an article in California Prison Focus critical of CDCR and expressing some of these same political ideas (CPF Fall 2003), they considered this “more than one source independently provid(ing) the same information,” and “part of the information provided by the source has already proven to be true.” This expression of his political views and social criticism of the department’s practice of arbitrarily targeting and punishing left-wing political ideologies in prison in violation of the First Amendment and their own California Code of Regulations, Title 15, was sufficient to earn him another six years in SHU – though he in truth had no chance of release via inactive review.

Not only is political speech and expression protected by “the supreme laws of the land” – or is supposed to be – but it boggles the mind how an article in a publication CDCR not only allows into institutions, but the state delivers to our cell doors, can possibly be corroboration of a coerced informant’s scripted lies. This is what passes for corroboration in Mr. Kernan’s CDCR. The fact of the matter is there is no corroboration of evidence and no way to verify it if there was. IGI is the only one who gets to see the evidence used to consign men to these torture units forever.

Mr. Kernan went on to state, “These offenders are in the SHU with mountains of documentation of illegal criminal activities both out on the streets in public and in prison.” And it is just these types of irresponsible, intentionally dishonest statements which have cowed courts and legislators alike into turning a blind eye to wholesale psychological torture for decades in the California prison system. [9]

A panel of professionals firmly opposed to the torture of solitary confinement – Laura Magnani, Dorsey Nunn, Terry Kupers, Craig Haney and Charles Carbone – prepares to testify at Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s hearing Aug. 23. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

The truth of the matter is most validated indeterminate SHU prisoners haven’t had a single documented instance of misconduct or rules violation report for ANY criminal act in decades. I assure you if such a “mountain of illegal activities” was documented, you’d have an equally high mountain of rules violation reports, district attorney referrals and indictments. This is a lie specifically designed to put forward a non-existent justification for that which, according to “the rule of law,” is unjustifiable: indefinite psychological torture to coerce men into becoming informants, agent provocateurs and advocates for the same heinous practices which broke their minds and subsumed their wills.

To be sure, Mr. Kernan contradicted himself in his next breath by stating, in response to the statistical data showing gang violence has only increased as sensitive needs yards – inhabited exclusively by the debriefers, informants and other protective custody designees Mr. Kernan is singing the praises of – have expanded, that “the state’s gang problem has even increased, but separating those offenders we have in SHU has led to a decrease.”

Upon hearing this absurdity, even the assemblyman had to call him on the contradiction. As the hearing wore on and the objective evidence in front of the legislative oversight committee continued to contradict the lies and distortions Mr. Kernan was offering as authority, he stated, “Let’s not lose focus on the real public safety threat perpetuated by gangs in our system.”

And it is this narrow and intentionally ill-informed perspective on public safety which has produced an 800 percent increase in the California prison population, a dysfunctional correctional and nonexistent rehabilitation system, and led to the state’s use and expansion of domestic human experimentation, torture units on the victims of a socio-economic arrangement that has forced us from the bottom rung of society into the bowels of Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs. [10]

The lights in these SHU cells are never turned off, causing sensory deprivation that is another form of torture.

Mr. Kernan and the rest of the prison industrialists can lay the blame for society’s ills at the feet of “gangs” all they like, and the vicious cycle will only continue ebbing toward the inexorable decline of Western Civilization. Until such time as we all accept the fact that “gangs” are the inevitable outgrowth of capitalist contradictions, of educational and labor underdevelopment in underclass communities and your political and economic leaders’ unwillingness or inability to address the gross disparities between the haves and have nots as the true origin of society’s ills, “gang” violence and systematic criminality will continue to be part of the U.S. social fabric.

Luckily, as consciousness raising efforts like the global Occupy Wall Street Movement continue to sweep across the planet, these “leaders” will be forced to acknowledge the obvious. With a multi-billion dollar budget, Mr. Kernan and his department can make some significant contributions to a new approach. But as the continued intransigence of the department shows, true public safety is a remote concern of those you’ve invested with that responsibility.

The actual public safety threat lies in the underlying socio-economic relationship between poor communities and the prison industry, our society’s indifference to that conflict, and the apparent dogged pursuit of a law enforcement and correctional policy which has been both a dismal inhumane failure and economically unsustainable. The definition of “insanity” is pursuing the same course of action repeatedly and expecting a different result.

I’d like to address one final point Mr. Kernan raised that I believe is pertinent. He stated, “An offender that wants to rehab himself, he can’t because of an inmate telling him to go stab someone or he will be killed.” This is both a misrepresentation of truth and a dangerous exaggeration. There are numerous non-affiliates in the general population of CDCR and Mr. Kernan is well aware of it. Everyone in prison knows lumpen organizations or “gangs” in prison don’t force membership onto non-affiliates, because history has proven such prisoners always become informants, agents or are easily compelled to lie on those they formerly ran with.

But that’s not the core issue here. What is, is Mr. Kernan’s willingness to dispense such tripe as “facts” in hopes of somehow convincing the people that the perpetual torture of over 3,000 human beings is somehow legitimate. This type of thinking and speech MUST be confronted and debunked. Indefinite solitary confinement of humans in California, across the U.S. and throughout the world must be opposed, resisted and abolished.
Indefinite solitary confinement of humans in California, across the U.S. and throughout the world must be opposed, resisted and abolished.

In the wake of the atrocities of World War II, a document was drafted which stated “The protagonists of this practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study. All agree, however, that certain basic principles must be observed in order to satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts.” That was an excerpt from the Nuremberg Code. [11]

The most passionate and powerful testimony at the Aug. 23 hearing came from SHU survivors and prisoners’ family members, especially Earl Fears and Glenda Rojas shown here. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Have we as a society descended so far into the miasma of fear, hatred and dehumanization that we would condone the state-sponsored torture of thousands of humans from our communities, in our name?

I began this discussion with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to illustrate the slippery slope we are on as a society. Maintenance of these torture units is an injustice; a continuation of the current law enforcement and correctional policy in relation to fundamental socio-economic disparities is inhumane. Injustice anywhere, even here in Corcoran SHU’s 4B1L-C-Section, is a threat to justice everywhere. Today it is us; tomorrow if may be someone you love or, God forbid, you yourself.
Have we as a society descended so far into the miasma of fear, hatred and dehumanization that we would condone the state-sponsored torture of thousands of humans from our communities, in our name?

It was Fyodor Dostoevsky who said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” How civilized is this society? And to answer that question with another: How civilized are you, the people who make it up?

If this second hunger strike effort has taught us anything, it is that the power to transform an intransigent industrial interest such as CDCR must come from the will of the people, from exercising your limitless power. Prison authorities were fully content to let us die this time and even modified their medical responses to maximize the chance of permanent injury or death to hunger strikers, which makes the broader aspects of this struggle so significant.
The power to transform an intransigent industrial interest such as CDCR must come from the will of the people, from exercising your limitless power.

This is not over. It is a protracted struggle that does not end, yet simply begins, with the abolition of SHU torture units. It is the intent of the NCTT to ensure not another human is done this way, not another soul lost to such greedy and heartless people. [12]

Participating in the first round of the hunger strike, 6,600 prisoners and in the second round 12,000 prisoners joined their comrades in SHU to demand an end to “gang validation” and the torture of solitary confinement.
It is our intent to fight for true rehabilitation and positive empowerment, not merely for current or ex-prisoners, but for the underclass communities we all too often hail from. If we can provide community-based initiatives and programs which address the inherent social inequalities in the class arrangement, this will eliminate the motive for property crimes – which make up 98 percent of all crime in the U.S. – and give us all safer and more prosperous communities, allowing us all to partake of the inalienable rights provided for in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The nature of California state and U.S. corrections must change. But to do that we must change society. Who dares to take up such a challenge? Who dares breathe life into the promise of the Declaration of Independence? Who dares champion the poor, the most disenfranchised and underdeveloped communities, the ghettoes, barrios and trailer parks of Amerika? Who dares champion the most vulnerable and urbanized in our society – the felon, the SHU prisoner, the poor?
Who dares champion the most vulnerable and urbanized in our society – the felon, the SHU prisoner, the poor?

Who dares do the right thing when the Scott Kernans of the world swear it’s wrong? Who dares to struggle? Who dares to win? We do, and we hope you do too.

Join us! This power to shape history and the future of the society is in your hands. We have faith you will uphold the highest standards of humanity. Our love and solidarity to all those who love freedom, justice and equality and fear only failure.

For more information on the NCTT or its work products and initiatives, contact Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-Cor-SHU 4B1L #53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212; J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-Cor-SHU 4B1L #46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212; Kambui Robinson, C-82830, CSP-Cor-SHU 4B1L #49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

Related Posts

Letters from Hugo Pinell and other hunger strikers – Rally to support the hunger strikers

How the hunger strike started for me

George Jackson: Forty years ago they shot him down

Repression breeds resistance!

CDCR: Bay View is contraband for mentioning George Jackson and Black August

Article printed from San Francisco Bay View: http://sfbayview.com

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I Committed Murder

2011-09-27T01:56:00.000-07:00

Sep 25, 2011
Daily Beast/Newsweek
By Michael Daly

For the anonymous executioners of death row, the ‘high’ of pulling the lever is often followed by a lifetime of doubt.

Only a fellow executioner like 59-year-old Jerry Givens would know how crushingly hard it will continue to be for those who put Troy Davis to death last week even as he continued to insist on his innocence.

“The executioner is the one that suffers,” Givens says on the day after Davis’s execution in Georgia. “The person that carries out the execution itself is stuck with it the rest of his life. He has to wear that burden. Who would want that on them?”

During the 17 years that Givens worked as an executioner in Virginia, he put 62 men to death. And each time, he felt what he calls “the executioner high,” an adrenalized state that always imparted a merciful unreality as he sat behind a curtain and pulled the lever, releasing a fatal cocktail of three drugs that seemed to him less humane than the electricity he previously unleashed by pulling a switch. The chemicals of lethal injection always took eternal minutes longer than the deadly jolt from the electric chair.

“I had to transform myself into a person who would take a life,” Givens says. “That transformation might linger for a while. You might be on that for three weeks.”

He figures this same high visited the executioners in Georgia who dispatched Davis last week, in accordance with the state’s Administrative and Execution Procedures, Lethal Injection, Under Death Sentence. “I guess those people last night were on that emotional executioner high.” He says the high is all the more intense with cases that receive public attention, such as when he dispatched the Briley brothers in Virginia in the mid-1980s after their seven-month spree of rape and at least 11 murders.

But once the protective high wears off, the executioner is left with the reality that he has taken a life. And in the case of condemned prisoners like Davis, who maintain their innocence to the very end, there is always that lingering doubt. The only certainty is that the penalty is irrevocable.

“You take an innocent life—that means I committed murder,” Givens says.

If Troy Davis wasn’t in fact innocent, there is a near certainty that some prisoners presently on death row are. A recent tabulation by the Death Penalty Information Center showed that 138 prisoners were exonerated after being sentenced to death between 1973 and 2010. That included five in Georgia, the state that remained determined to put Davis to death despite the numerous reasonable doubts regarding his guilt and the momentous public outrage joined by such varied public figures as Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

While the prosecutors, jurors, and judge all had their say in putting a prisoner on death row, the task of actually carrying out the sentence falls to an executioner with no idea of what was said and done at trial. “You don’t know,” Givens says. “You don’t take part in the trial. You weren’t there to witness it.” And even cases of undisputed guilt can continue to haunt executioners to the end of their days. In all 62 of Givens’s cases in Virginia, the official paperwork bore a word that has stayed with him. “When you look at the death certificate it says, ‘HOMICIDE,’” he notes. “How can it leave you?”

His career as an executioner ended 11 years ago, when he was convicted on charges of perjury and money laundering unrelated to his work—going to prison himself for four years, swearing he was innocent. Givens is now a truckdriver, but the residual horror of his time as an executioner flashed back to him as he followed from afar the news reports of the Davis case. “Whenever they have an execution, I get back to when I used to do them. It’s human nature.”

Also in human nature is a cumulative revulsion to taking life even when it is legally sanctioned. Those who finally have been driven to campaign against the death penalty include not just executioners like Givens, but a number of wardens who found it unbearable even to give the order that the executioners carry out. A longtime warden of San Quentin prison in California began to choke up when asked about four executions over which she presided, particularly the execution of Manuel Babbitt, a decorated Vietnam vet who killed a 78-year-old woman in a burglary. Babbitt’s brother had turned him in after false assurances that the state would not seek the death penalty. “The brother had to come that night and watch him be executed,” Jeanne Woodford, the former warden, recalls.

The 58-year-old lifelong corrections official says that presiding over executions actually becomes more difficult over time. “You have to appear normal,” she says. “You have to appear in control ... You try to tell yourself and your staff that this is the law.”

Her career of nearly four decades culminated with her 2004 appointment as the director of all of California’s prisons, but soon afterward, she resigned.

“I knew I couldn’t carry out another execution,” she says. “I knew I just couldn’t do it.”

She says that, from the start, “it never made sense to me that we would believe killing a human being would make up for killing a human being.”

Woodford has concluded that capital punishment also makes no fiscal sense. She figures that her state spent $4 billion to execute 13 inmates between 1992 and 2006—money that would have been much better spent on fielding more cops. She notes that nearly half of California’s murders go unsolved. “If this is really about public safety, then the better option is to keep police on the streets,” she says.

Woodford further suggests that the ultimate sanction is unacceptably arbitrary in its application. She has joined other former wardens, along with at least one executioner, in a national effort to save others from the experiences that perpetually haunt them.

“The death penalty shouldn’t exist at all,” she says.

In the meantime, executioners in 36 states will continue with the ritual that begins with swabbing the condemned’s arm with alcohol, a ghoulish precaution against infection from the needle that will momentarily deliver death.

One recent addition to the protocol in Georgia is the “consciousness check,” instituted this year after two of the condemned were apparently administered insufficient doses of an anesthetic that precedes the two chemicals that do the actual killing. Because of the insufficient doses, the two are believed to have suffered the horror of being suffocated by the paralyzing pancuronium bromide, and then the agony of being burned from within by the potassium chloride. A shortage of the anesthetic sodium thiopental had forced Georgia officials to purchase a batch from an English firm called Dream Pharma that operates out of a storefront driving school in London.

Besides adopting a new anesthetic, phenobarbital, Georgia adopted the new check, which involves tapping the condemned’s eye and nudging his arm after the administration of the first drug, to ensure he is unconscious before the remaining two are delivered.

That was the procedure followed in the Davis execution, by a team contracted by the state through a company called Rainbow Medical Associates. Rainbow is headlined by Dr. Carlo Musso, who presents himself as a professional descendant of Dr. Guillotin, arguing that he is only trying to spare the condemned prisoner unnecessary suffering.

If Musso is untroubled by his work, he is undoubtedly an exception. The others may still be finding protection in that “executioner high” that Givens describes, and they will likely experience it again on Oct. 5, when Georgia is scheduled to execute Marcus Ray Johnson for killing a woman in 1994.

When that high wears off and reality sets in, the consciousness check will be followed by a conscience check. And, if Givens is right, the executioners will then be the ones who suffer.

Givens finds refuge from his ghosts in religion, coping more successfully than some executioners of earlier days. Two of New York’s executioners committed suicide: Dow Hover by carbon monoxide in 1990 and John Hulbert with a gun in 1929 after saying, “I got tired of killing people.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/i-committed-murder.html

I Ordered Death in Georgia: The state's former D.O.C. commissioner on 'rehearsed murder.'

2011-09-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

From: The Daily Beast/Newsweek

I Ordered Death in Georgia
Sep 25, 2011
By Alan Ault
The state's former D.O.C. commissioner on 'rehearsed murder.'

I can’t always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: they admitted it to me. But now it was 1993 and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.

On execution days, I always drove from Atlanta to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. I knew death row well: 20 years earlier, I had built it. The state had hired me as the warden of Georgia Diagnostic in 1971, where I renovated a special cell block for especially violent offenders. After I left Georgia in 1977, the state reinstated the death penalty and turned the cell block I had developed into death row.

The state executed Stevens first, in June 1993, and then Burger in December. In both instances, I visited them in a cell next to the electric-chair chamber, where they counted down the hours until they died. They were calm, mature, and remorseful. When the time came, I went to a small room directly behind the death chamber where the attorney general worked the phones, checking with the courts to make sure that the executions were not stayed. Then we asked the prisoners for their final words. Stevens said nothing, and Burger apologized, saying, “Please forgive me.” I looked to the prison electrician and ordered him to pull the switch. Last Wednesday, as the state of Georgia prepared to execute Troy Davis despite concerns about his guilt, I wrote a letter with five former death-row wardens and directors urging Georgia prison officials to commute his sentence. I feared not only the risk of Georgia killing an innocent man, but also the psychological toll it would exact on the prison workers who performed his execution. “No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt,” we wrote in our letter.

The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like post traumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren’t sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.

I didn’t grow up saying, “I want to work in prisons.” I had never even been in a prison or a jail before I became warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. The commissioner at the time hired me to revamp the system, to implement case management, and work with inmates to make them safer. I had always worked in helping professions, and my main goal in corrections was always to reduce recidivism, so that inmates would leave prison better than they arrived. Over this course of time, the death penalty figured larger and larger into my work. I never supported it, but I also did not want to let it distract me from improving overall prison conditions. Death-row inmates are, after all, only a tiny fraction of the prison population.

When I was required to supervise an execution, I tried to rationalize my work by thinking, if I just save one future victim, maybe it is worth it. But I was very aware of the research showing that the death penalty wasn’t a deterrent. I left my job as corrections commissioner in Georgia in 1995 partially because I had had enough: I didn’t want to supervise the executions anymore. My focus changed to national crime policy and then to academia, where I could work to improve the criminal-justice system without participating in its worst parts. Today, I am the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/ordering-death-in-georgia-prisons.html

Hunger strike recap: California prisoners show the way!

2011-09-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

In: SF Bay View
September 14, 2011

by K. Kersplebedeb

[image: Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s hearing in Sacramento Aug. 23 and all the efforts being made in solidarity with the hunger strikers are cutting through the chains and locks that prevent the public from knowing the truth about the Pelican Bay SHU. This “censored pelican” was drawn by Pete Collins, who is imprisoned at Bath Prison, Ontario, Canada.]

This spring, the news started going around that a hunger strike was being planned in the Security Housing Unit at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP). Prisoners at the SHU had apparently united across racial lines and promised to hungerstrike to the death if need be, starting on July 1.

Initially most of the attention paid to the planned strike came from a small collection of organizations, mostly based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a clear mandate to support prisoners’ struggles and resist the prison-industrial complex. While much of the left ignores prison issues or considers them at best a peripheral symptom of more fundamental social dysfunction, these groups recognized the potential importance of prisoner-led resistance in Pelican Bay’s SHU, California’s flagship torture unit.

Isolation torture in the USA

Pelican Bay was built in 1989, on the remote northern edge of California, in the economically depressed town of Crescent City. One section of the new prison was designated the “Security Housing Unit” (SHU) – essentially a control unit, in which people are condemned to conditions of solitary confinement. The Pelican Bay SHU was just one of many such facilities built around this time, an indirect consequence of the United States’ ongoing mass incarceration policies.

As eloquently described by Michelle Alexander in her recent book “The New Jim Crow,” mass incarceration began as a ruling class response to the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s, the result of the so-called “war on drugs,” crafted so as to replicate many of the effects of segregation but without the embarrassing bigoted rhetoric. Forty years later, the result is over two and a half million people in U.S. prisons, a majority of them people of color.

Units like the Pelican Bay SHU were partly a result of the “law and order” ideology that accompanied and supported mass incarceration; partly they were intended to neutralize any resistance from those who were now slated to spend their lives behind bars. As Manuel La Fontaine of All of Us or None and the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition has explained, “The minute one becomes politically engaged inside, and you begin to challenge the conditions of confinement or begin to organize others to look beyond themselves and to focus on the things that led to their incarceration, such as social, political and economic oppression here in America and throughout the world, is the minute you’re deemed a candidate for the SHU.”1

People have spent years – in some cases decades – buried alive in the Pelican Bay SHU and similar facilities. Cells have no windows, just fluorescent lights which are never turned off. Prisoners spend 22-23 hours a day thus confined; when they are allowed out, it is to be brought – alone – to what is euphemistically called an “exercise yard” – in fact, just a larger enclosed space with grating instead of a roof. Prisoners are fed substandard food, they are punished collectively for issues involving individuals, and their indefinite SHU sentences only end if they agree to “debrief,” that is to say, to snitch.

Violence from guards is commonplace, as detailed by Keramet Reiter:

“In Madrid v. Gomez, a federal court case evaluating the constitutionality of the conditions at Pelican Bay, Judge Thelton Henderson recorded myriad staff abuses of prisoners at the institution. The most memorable: Vaughn Dortch, a mentally ill African-American prisoner, whom guards forced to take a ‘bath’ in near-boiling water. One guard said, as he was holding Dortch down in the water: ‘Looks like we’re going to have a white boy before this is through.’ Dortch sustained third-degree burns over half of his body; guards waited more than an hour after the conclusion of the bath before taking Dortch to a hospital for burn treatment. Judge Henderson ordered numerous reforms to the policies and practices at the institution, including better staff training and diversion of mentally ill prisoners from the SHU. However, Judge Henderson stopped short of declaring the physical structure of long-term solitary confinement unconstitutional.”2

The main excuse used to send prisoners to the SHU is “gang ties,” and yet a majority have never been convicted of any such thing. Being “validated” as a gang member is an administrative decision, with no real possibility of appeal, even though the result can be years or even decades of solitary confinement.

To give just one example: in the 2009 court ruling Lira vs. Cate, it was found that former prisoner Ernesto Lira had spent years in the SHU because of a sketch he had allegedly drawn, an anonymous tip, and a report from a prison guard that was mis-transcribed. The court found that as a result of his time in the SHU, Lira now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression, and that throughout his incarceration, despite his objections that he was not a gang member, he was never provided with any meaningful review of his “validation.” Lira’s case is far from being exceptional; sadly, it is typical of those who end up in America’s supermaxes.3

Long-term isolation has been described as “clean torture,” for it is designed to inflict grave psychological and even physical harm, but without leaving any visible wounds. As Craig Haney of the University of California at Santa Cruz has noted, “There is not a single published study of solitary or supermax-like confinement in which nonvoluntary confinement lasting for longer than 10 days, where participants were unable to terminate their isolation at will, that failed to result in negative psychological effects. The damaging effects ranged in severity and included such clinically significant symptoms as hypertension, uncontrollable anger, hallucinations, emotional breakdowns, chronic depression, and suicidal thoughts and behavior.”4

A family member of a Pelican Bay SHU prisoner describes conditions as follows:

“[T]he warden took calendars away in December 2010. Now they have to make calendars to keep track of which day it is. They lose touch with family as they are not allowed phone calls ever (unless they debrief), the trip by car from Southern California is about 14 hours each direction, by plane the cost to fly into Crescent City with plenty of advanced notice is $440 per person, the accommodations are $87 per night for the cheaper hotel and more for 3-4 people. The visiting is behind glass with one phone. […] They are deprived of all natural light, food, warmth – sweats and night caps are not allowed even though the prison is located on the coast in the mountains. They never turn on the heat so the concrete walls keep the cells cold as freezers. Milk will stay cold in a cell for days. The food looks like vomit, and when refused the guards will say I don’t blame you.”

The prisoners live at the mercy of their captors. For instance, as part of a labor action in the midst of California’s perennial budget crisis, guards recently denied prisoners what little comforts they normally receive, and this for months on end. As the above writer noted:

“They were locked in the cells for almost 2 months straight – no ‘yard’, no showers, no packages or books passed out. It was to say we will do nothing until we get the 3% raise. They did and 3,500 teachers were laid off but the guards did start pushing a button for showers … yes a button.”

In these conditions, kept isolated from one another and tortured for years on end, some SHU prisoners managed to get word out about their strike. The organizers were all from D Corridor – known as the “short corridor,” this is where prisoners are subjected to the most restrictive conditions – and they became known as the Short Corridor Collective. They reached out to other prisoners, and there was talk that dozens would go on strike, perhaps as many as a hundred.

Their demands were detailed in a Formal Complaint, and summarized as follows:

1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners are accused of being active or inactive participants of prison gangs, using false or highly dubious evidence, and are then sent to longterm isolation (SHU). They can escape these tortuous conditions only if they “debrief,” that is, provide information on gang activity. Debriefing produces false information (wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, in an endless cycle) and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement. This bipartisan commission specifically recommended to “make segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.” Yet as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in SHUs and hundreds more in administrative segregation waiting for a SHU cell to open up. Some prisoners have been kept in isolation for more than 30 years.

4. Provide adequate food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations. There is no accountability or independent quality control of meals.

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates. The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities.” Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves. Examples of privileges the prisoners want are one phone call per week and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps. Often warm clothing is denied, though the cells and exercise cage can be bitterly cold. All of the privileges mentioned in the demands are already allowed at other supermax prisons in the federal prison system and other states.

The Short Corridor Collective requested people on the outside organize to amplify their voices and coordinate communication through the walls. In response to this call, a Prisoner Hunger Strike Support Coalition was set up in San Francisco, including a number of the key organizations working to support prisoners in California: All of Us or None, California Prison Focus, Critical Resistance, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, the Prison Activist Resource Center, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the American Friends Service Committee, BarNone Arcata and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. A media team was established to make sure the prisoners’ voices would be heard in the public arena. Similarly, a mediation team was set up, with a mandate to support the prisoners in their dealings with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) once the strike began.

The strike

On July 1, news started coming in from throughout California that there were people in many prisons, not just Pelican Bay, refusing food. From PBSP itself, word arrived that not only was almost everyone in the SHU participating, but that those in general population were also on board. It suddenly looked like the strike might have mobilized not hundreds but thousands – an order of magnitude greater than anyone had dreamed.

Indeed, although CDCR claimed at the time that fewer than two dozen were on strike,5 within a few days it admitted that in fact over 6,000 prisoners had joined in refusing meals on July 1. At least 13 of California’s 33 prisons were affected. Some strikers were accepting liquid food, some were eating food from the canteen, but many were refusing any and all sustenance.

The Short Corridor Collective had called on other prisoners to strike in solidarity for as long as they felt comfortable, even if they were not willing to go to the death, and that is clearly what was happening, involving numbers that no one had anticipated. The thousands of striking prisoners were joined by individuals on the outside who also began fasting to support their demands. During the first week, solidarity demonstrations were held in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle and Montreal. Press coverage in this first period was mainly limited to California mainstream media, and various progressive blogs and news websites.

By definition, hunger strikes are difficult on those who engage in them. Humane medical care is to be hoped for, but often prison doctors and nurses work not to protect the strikers’ health, but to help the administration break the protest. This is what happened in some California prisons; there were numerous reports in the first week of strikers simply not being monitored and of doctors refusing them their prescription meds. While clearly punitive, CDCR framed this as the system being overwhelmed by the scope of the strike and wary of the dangers of prescribing medication meant to be taken with food.

This medical neglect prompted 40 healthcare providers from across North America to quickly sign an open letter expressing their “grave concern.” As they noted, “If it is true that CDCR medical staff are refusing prisoners their medications, either as punishment for being in the SHU or else as punishment for being on hunger strike, this is not only unethical, but also illegal under California Penal Code Section 673. This would be an act of deliberate indifference to a patient’s serious medical needs, and as such would constitute a violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment Constitutional rights.” The healthcare professionals called upon CDCR “to ensure that no prisoner on hunger strike be disciplined or threatened with the denial of medical care” and demanded that “all medical professionals uphold their code of ethics and maintain the highest standards of care for all their patients – be they incarcerated or not.”6

[image: This is the D corridor, where many of the hunger strikers live – if you can call it living – in the Pelican Bay SHU. One of the strike’s achievements was opening the SHU to the press. The California Department of Corrections hosted a few major media reporters Aug. 17 in a rare tour of the SHU, but they were denied access to this corridor. – Photo: Julie Small, KPCC]

Medical neglect was just one of the ways CDCR pressured strikers to resume eating. At Pelican Bay, prisoners were given an “Information Sheet” which – under guise of informing them of their rights – was essentially meant to impress upon them that there would no negotiations, and that there was only one possible final outcome if they persisted: “Since refusing food will eventually lead to increased illness and death, you will be asked to find a suitable person to ensure your wishes are followed once you cannot express them for yourself […] It is also encouraged that you consider your decision to refuse food may be very difficult for your close family and friends.”

In some facilities, prison officials sent general population strikers into segregation – i.e. solitary – and denied them the right to visit with family members. At others, they simply resorted to lies to break the strike. For instance, at Calipatria prison, located in the hot desert on the Mexican border, guards announced on July 7 that CDCR had agreed to all five demands and that the strike was over. This worked, and everybody started eating again. Several days later word was received that this had been a trick, and many prisoners resumed their fast.

Despite these pressure tactics, two weeks into the strike, thousands were still refusing food.7 Such a show of solidarity, across “racial” lines, in prisons across California, had not been seen for generations. This alone constitutes a major achievement.

Meanwhile, on the outside, demonstrations were held in cities across California and throughout the United States. While the numbers attending were small – the largest attracted less than 200, most brought out dozens, and some less than that – these were growing, as were the numbers of family members who were joining, and becoming increasingly prominent speaking to media and facilitating communication with those on the inside.

Why the small numbers? It is an automatic reflex when evaluating any disappointing lack of activity around any issue to point to the left’s ongoing weakness; this is obviously a (or even “the”) factor, but it’s not one that will be solved tomorrow, and it doesn’t explain why other issues attract more people. It makes more sense to see the poor turnout at these protests as a consequence of the fact that there has not been a strong movement inside the prisons for many years, and that the state’s perpetual propaganda offensive keeps many people – including people from oppressed communities – wary of supporting “criminals.”

Furthermore, even those organizations that have been doing important work around prisons have a limited ability to mobilize on the streets and escalate quickly in a crisis, which is what an indefinite hunger strike represents. There is no denying the importance of building capacity, putting down roots and pursuing long-term community-oriented strategies; that said, conflicts are also decided by speed and initiative, and these are underdeveloped qualities even on the radical left.

Nobody had expected thousands to engage in this hunger strike, and many of those organizations which should have been involved from day one were taken by surprise, left trying to catch up with events – and sadly, it must be said, some simply didn’t bother. Nevertheless, as the importance of what was taking place in California became clear, many groups did begin to orient themselves accordingly.

As a sign of this, two weeks into the strike the San Francisco solidarity coalition held a mass conference call, with over 140 people representing a variety of organizations participating. It is clear that every day the strike continued, new groups and new cities were getting involved. As already mentioned, more and more family members were participating in support activities, bringing their own capacities and experiences into the mix. Had the strike lasted longer, this growth could have led to a qualitatively different level of struggle on the outside.

The prisoncrats’ response was twofold. First, they continued to insist that there would be no negotiations; in the words of Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for Receiver Kelso, who is in charge of California prison health care, “They have the right to choose to die of starvation if they wish.” Second, officials argued that the strike’s very success proved the value of the SHU and other forms of long-term isolation. According to CDCR spin doctor Terry Thornton, “This goes to show the power, influence and reach of prison gangs. Some people are doing it because they want to do it, and some are being ordered to do it.”8

Medical crisis

Not surprisingly, health issues remained a serious concern for the duration of the strike. Prisoners were being advised to take multivitamins and salt tablets – and yet these were often not available. CDCR insisted that everyone was being monitored, but there were reports that this “monitoring” consisted of someone standing at a cell door asking if the prisoner was feeling all right. Prisoners were supposed to be weighed daily, but this was sometimes done while they wore chains, sometimes not, making the entire exercise somewhat pointless.

As stated by Dr. Corey Weinstein, a private correctional medical consultant and human rights investigator with 40 years experience providing health care to California prisoners:

“Given my long history of working with California prisoners, I have grave doubts about the Department of Corrections’ ability to adequately carry out their own guidelines and protocols even during this urgent and public moment. Reports such as prisoners with very low blood sugar levels and lack of urination for 3 days should not be coming from the prison. These are men who require hospital care under prison protocols. We should ask why do they remain at the prison?”9

On July 12, supporters became particularly alarmed, as they received reports that some prisoners were suffering from severe dehydration, had lost consciousness, and/or were on the verge of renal failure. Dehydration is a major risk when on hunger strike, and it is imperative that one drink a lot of liquids when fasting. It remains unclear whether the dehydration was the result of some prisoners having escalated to a thirst strike, or if it was due to the guards having provided them with inadequate fluids. Severely weakened strikers had to be brought to the prison infirmary, where they were rehydrated intravenously.

At about this time, rumors began circulating that a prisoner had died. This turned out to be false, partly the result of people misunderstanding a strongly worded letter from Corcoran prisoners where a striker losing consciousness was described as having “gone down,” and partly par for the course in a heavy life-or-death struggle where information was always so highly restricted by the prisoncrats.

One of the reasons the state developed isolation prisons was to cut prisoners off from their communities and, amongst other things, this is intended to make solidarity work more difficult. Luckily, the support coalition was able to confirm that this rumor was false before mobilizing around the claim, which would have constituted an embarrassing public relations setback.
Negotiations and pressure tactics

In this dire situation, there was a breakthrough on Thursday, July 14, as CDCR announced that it was meeting with the hunger strikers’ representatives. The prisoncrats – who had claimed just hours earlier that they would rather see people die than negotiate – were now agreeing to discuss their demands. In and of itself, this was an unprecedented victory.

Nevertheless, the next day, the Short Corridor Collective unanimously rejected CDCR’s initial offer, a vague promise to “effect a comprehensive assessment of its existing policy and procedure.” As prisoner negotiator George Franco has explained, “Mr. Scott Kernan was very demanding and disrespectful towards us therefore, the negotiators went ‘nowhere’ we explained to our mediation team what occurred and what to do as a result of this meeting.”10

Support on the outside now accelerated. Along with weekly pickets in Oakland, there were daily protests in Los Angeles and the first demonstration in Sacramento. In Montreal, there had been weekly pickets outside the U.S. consulate from week one, and now these were joined by regular events in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities across the United States. At the same time, plans were announced for two pickets in London, England, marking the first spread of protests overseas.

By this point, close to a hundred organizations, from the ACLU to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, had come out in support of the prisoners demands. On July 17, the New York Times ran an op-ed critical of CDCR and sympathetic to the strikers,11 which was followed the next day by a positive editorial in the San Jose Mercury News12 and the day after that by an editorial in the LA Times criticizing CDCR for not allowing journalists into Pelican Bay.13

As a consequence of the prisoners’ refusal to end their strike on July 15, and keenly aware of the mounting support from the outside, CDCR attempted to buttress its position by threatening and further isolating the prisoner representatives. SHU prisoners are normally not permitted phone calls but, given the extraordinary circumstances, they had been allowed to phone the support coalition’s mediation team on the 15th to explain why they were refusing CDCR’s offer.

As a result of this initial refusal, it was made known that there would be no more such calls. Then, at 5:30 a.m. on July 18, 17 prisoners from Pelican Bay – including three members of the prisoners’ negotiating team – were transferred to Corcoran prison, apparently due to the severity of their condition and the fact that the Pelican Bay infirmary was now full beyond capacity.

That same day prison officials attempted to resume negotiations – but given that morning’s transfer to Corcoran, there were no New Afrikan prisoner negotiators left at Pelican Bay. It took another day for the warden to agree to allow another New Afrikan prisoner representative to join the negotiating team and another two days after that for Scott Kernan to return to the table.

July 20, as negotiations resumed, CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate announced that he would seek a court order allowing prison officials to force-feed striking prisoners – including those who had signed advance medical directives indicating that they did not wish to receive any such life-sustaining measures.14

While California is one of three states where the courts have ruled that prisoners can in some circumstances refuse medical care, nationally judges have more often ruled in favor of force-feeding hunger striking prisoners.15

[image: Constant strip searches required of prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU are humiliating and degrading.]

In some of these cases the courts specifically differentiate between individuals choosing to starve themselves for personal reasons – depression, sickness etc. – and political hunger strikes, i.e. those in which some kind of redress was being demanded. The latter, characterized as “manipulative hunger strikes,” have been deemed “detrimental to the effective administration of the prison system,”16 and this might have provided the legal opening for Cate’s gambit.

Force-feeding is the state’s trump card when dealing with political hunger strikes. It is intensely painful, especially when the patient resists, and is often used as an excuse for physical violence from guards and other staff. Indeed, force-feeding has itself been described as a form of violence. At the same time – despite the fact that prisoners have died while being force-fed, and that the World Medical Association prohibits the practice – in the public’s eye the procedure often reduces the urgency of a strike, because people incorrectly believe that the health of a person being force-fed is no longer at risk.

What Matthew Cate was doing, essentially, was threatening a new form of torture. It remains unclear whether this was used as a pressure tactic during the day’s negotiations or if it was being prepared as a fall-back position lest negotiations continued to bear no fruit.

These were the circumstances in which CDCR renewed negotiations with the Short Corridor Collective. With hundreds of prisoners having gone almost three weeks without food, and with this new threat looming, CDCR offered to accede on a few small points right away. It was stated that this was simply meant as a tangible gesture of good faith in support of an assurance that all of the prisoners’ other issues would receive real attention, with meaningful changes being implemented over time.

In fact, the impression the negotiators were left with was that CDCR had agreed to work towards meeting all five demands. CDCR promised to send representatives back to Pelican Bay within a few weeks to provide the prisoners with a progress report in this regard.

So it was that, on July 20, the prisoners accepted CDCR’s offer, and the strike was suspended. Arrogantly, CDCR Undersecretary Scott Kernan contacted the support coalition and told them the strike was over, expecting them to then announce this on his say so. This would of course have been out of the question under any circumstances, but especially given that prison officials had already been caught lying earlier in the strike.

In the end, Kernan had to allow the Short Corridor Collective a phone call to the outside mediators to inform them that the strike had indeed ended. This call was placed on July 21. This was just the beginning of the delays in communication, as the task at hand now became checking in with other prisoners across the state – most of whom had not been in direct contact with the support coalition and many of whom were in segregation or other supermaxes. This process would have taken even longer if not for the initiative of family members, who arranged to get the word in that the strike had indeed been suspended. Nevertheless, it was several days before almost all prisoners had resumed eating, and there were reports of hold-outs as much as one week later.

There was an understandable reticence within the support coalition to publicly announce the strike over in this situation, when it was known that other prisoners continued to refuse food. Nobody could be sure that the Short Corridor Collective’s decision would be accepted by prisoners across the state – it was unclear if those still fasting were doing so because they had not heard it was over or if they intended to continue the strike on their own.

As a result, even after the mediation team had been contacted, supporters around the world were unsure whether the strike had been called off or if this was one of CDCR’s tricks, and nobody on the outside seemed able to provide clarity on this question. This confusion was compounded by the fact that journalists had been denied access to the prisoners, and so news stories often recycled information from one another for days after the fact.

Eventually, though, it became clear that everyone who had been participating had indeed recommenced eating. California’s historic hunger strike of July 2011 seemed to have come to an end, after having united thousands of prisoners, garnering support from organizations across America and internationally, and forcing CDCR to the negotiating table.
Aftermath

As prisoners transitioned back to eating, many of the issues that had arisen during the hunger strike continued. Some family members found that they were being denied visits with their loved ones who had been on strike, many of whom received 128B forms, “informational chronos,” which go into their records permanently. These chronos threatened “progressive discipline … in the future for any reoccurrence of this type of behavior.”17

Even now that the strike had been suspended, medical protocol during this transitional period was in some cases simply not followed. For instance, on July 21 one visitor met with a prisoner who had gone three weeks without food, and yet as she explains:

“When the announcement of the end of strike was made on the day before, he tried to eat from the dinner tray, but could not keep it down. The following day’s breakfast he could not keep down either. When he became very weak/dizzy during our interview and asked for water, the guard would not let us buy him water nor give him any, just offered ending the interview. […] He should have been offered a transition to solid food. I am not sure whether he did later, but not on the day we were there.”

Indeed, it was reported that the day after the strike ended, one prisoner had a heart attack while transitioning to food. This turned out not to be the case, but what had happened was that he had to be hospitalized after having major seizures which affected his heart’s ability to regulate its pulse. According to the prison medical staff, this was due to an electrolyte imbalance caused by the 20 days without food. After five days of treatment, he was returned to the Pelican Bay SHU.

Reaction to the strike ending has been mixed. The Short Corridor Collective and many other prisoners see it as a large step forward, declaring it a provisional victory. Some prisoners, however, have expressed disappointment that an agreement was reached with CDCR committing itself to so little in return.

Commenting on the strike being suspended, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Support coalition noted:

“While the concessions may seem too small to claim a victory, it’s important for people outside prison to understand the weight for prisoners who have been held in the SHU for decades of now being able to stay a little warmer, and to be able to keep track of time since they have no windows and the fluorescent lights are on 24 hours of every day. More so, worldwide support and momentous courage of thousands of prisoners to risk their lives effectively pressured the CDCR to sit at the same table and look prisoners in the face and offer a deal, after refusing to negotiate for weeks and insisting prisoners are less than human.”18
Prisoner representatives Mutope Duguma and George Franco have both stated that CDCR committed to meeting all five demands and that if it fails to do so then the strike will resume.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the strike must be seen as only the first step. Without ongoing pressure, CDCR will certainly refuse any meaningful changes. Early on, San Francisco Representative Tom Ammiano and the state Assembly’s Public Safety Committee agreed to hold hearings to examine conditions in the Pelican Bay SHU. These hearings were set for Aug. 23, and in the weeks following the strike’s suspension the outside coalition focused on mobilizing for this date.19

On the inside, prisoner representatives have stated that if progress is not quickly forthcoming, the struggle will continue: “We’ve drawn the line on this and should CDCR fail to carry out meaningful changes in a timely fashion, then we will initiate a class action suit and additional types of peaceful protest. We will not stop until the CDCR ends the illegal policies and practices at SHU!”20

Indeed, prisoner representatives Mutope Duguma and George Franco have both stated that CDCR committed to meeting all five demands and that if it fails to do so then the strike will resume.21
How it came to be

Just organizing a hunger strike involving thousands is incredible – and more than most left groups on the outside could accomplish. Adding the fact that so many of the prisoners are in solitary confinement to the equation and have no easy way of communicating directly with one another simply makes it all the more impressive.

Security Housing Units are sites of frequent and regular abuse, and so it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between retaliation and business as usual. For instance, in the lead up to the strike, some suspected strike organizers had their cells tossed, and there was at least one instance of the so-called “potty watch” being inflicted – an intentionally silly-sounding name for what is in fact a form of physical torture. As attorney Carol Strickman has explained:

“That’s a very cruel procedure where people are restrained for three days, put in diapers and unable to move their arms sometimes, or forced to stand, or strapped down. The rationale is that the prisoner has swallowed contraband and we are going to see it. We’re going to wait for three days and monitor their bowel movements and find the thing they’ve swallowed. But, it’s used for other reasons. It’s used as punishment even if they know that there is nothing there. This shouldn’t be used even if they think that there is something that the prisoner has swallowed. It’s painful, people can’t sleep. They can’t move their arms. I heard that sometimes their arms are put in a plastic pipe. It’s really horrible. We heard of that happening to one or two people before the hunger strike started in Pelican Bay.”22

Again, given the fact that such demeaning and cruel procedures are not unusual in the SHU, it is difficult to separate out preemptive retaliation from everyday abuse. Less ambiguously, announcements were made just prior to the strike that a special Fourth of July menu would include ice cream and strawberries – foods which many prisoners had not seen in all their years behind bars.

[image: Bomani Shakur]

The actual mechanics of how prisoners communicated with one another and arranged to send out word regarding the strike remain unknown, but not unimaginable. Beyond this technical proficiency, the success of the July 2011 hunger strike was facilitated by its location on an arc of increasing struggle within prisons in the United States. Specifically, two previous prisoner strikes during the preceding seven months had already helped prepare the ground the Short Corridor Collective’s July initiative: the December 2010 Georgia prisoners work strike, and the January 2011 Lucasville 5 hunger strike.

In Georgia, for six days in December, thousands of prisoners had refused to work or leave their cells or buy anything at the prison store. A work strike constitutes a direct challenge to the prison system, for without prisoners’ labor the prison system cannot function. Prisoners clean the floors, cook the food and perform every other task not related to custody – as well as being exploited by corporations which make super-profits from their labor.

The Georgia prisoners were demanding better educational opportunities, more nutritious food, access to their families and, most importantly some kind of payment for their jailhouse labor – in Georgia it is mandatory for prisoners to work for “Prison Industries,” a wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of Corrections, making prisoners the single largest workforce in the state. Furthermore, their labor is completely unpaid.

At least 30 prisons were affected, with thousands participating. The Georgia authorities retaliated by turning off the heat and hot water in the prisoners’ cells. Violence was used – guards beat several striking prisoners; one was so badly hurt he ended up in the ICU of a civilian hospital.23 This reign of terror continued even months after the strike had ended.24

Nevertheless, and although none of the prisoners’ demands were met, the Georgia prisoners’ strike was a major inspiration simply for having happened. It has been described as “a roadmap of what must come.”

The second example in this arc of protest occurred just weeks later, at the state penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio. On Jan. 3, 2011, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur and Jason Robb went on hunger strike to protest the severe isolation conditions they had suffered for 18 years. The three men are part of the Lucasville 5 – the other two were not healthy enough to participate – who helped negotiate a peaceful resolution to the 1993 uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility but were subsequently framed for murder and sentenced to death. Since then, they have been subject to extreme isolation; the demand of their hunger strike was simply to be granted the same living conditions as other death row prisoners.

After 12 days, the prison administration agreed to meet the demands of the Ohio hunger strikers.

Besides these two previous inspiring acts of resistance, a third external factor worth keeping in mind is the decision rendered by the Supreme Court in the case of Brown vs. Plata in May. This confirmed an earlier court ruling that conditions in California’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the state to reduce its prison population by approximately 32,000 over the next two years.

A lower court in the case had already found that it was “an uncontested fact” that “an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies”25 – a fact that was cited in the Short Corridor Collective’s Formal Complaint.26

How CDCR will comply with Plata is unclear. There are indications that Gov. Jerry Brown will try to transfer prisoners to the counties’ jurisdiction, which would simply shift the problem of overcrowding and potentially lead to people being held in even worse conditions.27

But in terms of the success of the July hunger strike, Plata had already helped expose the horrendous conditions in CDCR’s prisons, and so the department was caught in a vulnerable position. It is difficult to measure what effect this had, but it does play into the overall circumstances surrounding the hunger strike.

Regardless of these external factors, it is clear that the ones who really deserve the credit for the July success are the hunger strikers themselves, those who put their lives on the line to resist torture. All the positive factors in the world may line up, but without people willing to seize the moment, these amount to naught.

Frantz Fanon wrote, “In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression.”28 After decades of mass incarceration, the jailer has joined these “instituted go-betweens” as America’s dungeons have become central elements of class and national oppression. The delay with which most established left groups and talking heads responded to the hunger strike is a measure of their own disconnect from these realities.

Just as California built on advances in Ohio and Georgia, it is to be hoped that future struggles will build on this success and that as part of this process new connections and relationships will emerge between those on the inside and those of us on the outside, allowing space for the movement to overcome these shortcomings.

As Bomani Shakur, one of the Lucasville 5, stated in an open letter to the California hunger strikers: “The system as it currently exists must change, and this, what you all are doing right now, may very well be the catalyst to bring about that change. Remember that.”29

Indeed, this is something that none of us should forget.

K. Kersplebedeb, a Montreal-based writer and purveyor of political books and pamphlets, maintains several websites, including Kersplebedeb and Sketchy Thoughts, where this story first appeared. He can be reached at info at kersplebedeb.com.

1] “The worst of the worst is not allowing people to be treated as human beings” interview with Manuel LaFontaine, Revolution#239, July 17, 2011.

2] “A Brief History of Pelican Bay,” http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/pelican-bay/305-2/

3] Lira v. Cate, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91292 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 30, 2009). See also Carbone, Charles “The Jailer Has No Clothes,”California Prison Focus #34, pp. 13-4, accessed at http://prisons.org/documents/CPF-34.pdf.

4] “Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement” by Craig Haney, Crime & Delinquency 2003 49, p. 132.

5] “State says prison hunger strike involves fewer than two dozen inmates” by Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times, July 3, 2011.

6] “Statement of Medical Professionals on the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike,” accessed at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/july1/medical_letter.pdf

7] “Prisoners Near Death as 1,700 California Inmates Continue Hunger Strike to Protest Appalling Conditions” by Marie Diamond, Thinkprogress website, July 13, 2011.

8] “Calif. sees gang ties in prisoners’ hunger strike; Some inmates getting pressured into participating, state says” by Justin Berton, San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, 2011.

9] “More on Medical Crisis, Need Support Pressuring Immediate Negotiations,” July 14, 2011, accessed at http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/more-on-medical-crisis-need-support-pressuring-immediate-negotiations/

10] http://www.scribd.com/doc/62546906/Pelican-Bay-Prisoner-Letter

11] “Barbarous Confinement” by Colin Dayan, New York Times, July 17, 2011.

12] “California needs to improve prison conditions,” editorial, San Jose Mercury News, July 18, 2011.

13] “California’s hidden hunger strike,” editorial, LA Times, July 19, 2011.

14] “Prisoners on Hunger Strike Show Signs of Starvation, Official Wants to Force-Feed,” KQED News Staff, July 20, 2011.

15] “Testing ‘Cruzan’: Prisoners and the Constitutional Question of Self-Starvation” by Mara Silver, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Nov., 2005), pp. 657-9.

16] Silver, pp. 655-6, 660.

17] http://www.scribd.com/doc/62546906/Pelican-Bay-Prisoner-Letter

18] “Building a Movement to End Solitary Confinement, Against Imprisonment,”http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/, July 27, 2011.

19] See: “Historic California Assembly Hearing on Solitary Confinement” by Sal Rodriguez, Solitary Watch, Aug. 24, 2011, accessed at http://solitarywatch.com/2011/08/24/historic-california-assembly-hearing-on-solitary-confinement/.

20] “Written Statement by Short Corridor Collective,” July 22, 2011, accessed at http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/declaring-a-victory-ongoing-struggle/.

21] “This hunger strike is far from over,” San Francisco Bay View, Aug. 12, 2011. And: http://www.scribd.com/doc/62546906/Pelican-Bay-Prisoner-Letter

22] “The CDCR is using every method they have to try and stop this hunger strike,” interview with Carol Strickman, Revolution#239, July 17, 2011.

23] “Free ‘Em All: Carrying the Legacy of Prisoner-Led Resistance in Georgia,” interview with Eugene Thomas, The Abolitionist, Summer 2011, pp. 6-7.
“Georgia prisoners staged a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest,” David Slavin, San Francisco Bay View, Jan. 21, 2011.

24] “Protest retaliation against Georgia prisoners” by Mary Ratcliff, San Francisco Bay View, Feb. 20, 2011.

25] “Justices, 5-4, Tell California to Cut Prisoner Population” by Adam Liptak, New York Times, May 23, 2011, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24scotus.html?pagewanted=all

26] “Formal Complaint” Feb. 5, 2011, accessed at http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/formal-complaint/

27] See for instance “California’s prisoner shuffle” by Lois Davis, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 19, 2011.

28] “The Wretched of the Earth,” Frantz Fanon, p. 38.

29] “Letter of support for the hunger strikers from Bomani Shakur of the Lucasville 5 – and other strike updates,” San Francisco Bay View, July 3, 2011.

Death Row U.S.A. - Winter 2011: NAACP Legal Defense Fund Report

2011-09-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

From: Death penalty Information Center:

Sept 7, 2011

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's "Death Row USA" showed a slight increase of 9 inmates in the death row population in the United States between October 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011. However, death row is still significantly smaller now (3,251 inmates) than in 2000 (3,682 inmates). The size of death row also declined overall in 2010. The size of death row is affected by the number of death sentences and the number of executions. Nationally, the racial composition of those on death row is 44% white, 42% black, and 12% Latino/Latina. Texas, Louisiana, and Connecticut had death rows consisting of 70% minority defendants. California continues to have the largest death row population (721), followed by Florida (398), Texas (321), Pennsylvania (219), and Alabama (206). California and Pennsylvania have not carried out an executiion in over five years.

The report contains the latest death row population figures, execution statistics, and an overview of recent legal developments related to capital punishment.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund, "Death Row USA", January 1, 2011, posted September 7, 2011.

See also Death Row and Studies.

Conference Nov 2nd L.A.: Formerly-incarcerated and Convicted People and Allies

2011-09-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

Nov. 2nd FICPM L.A. Conference

From: Unprison

On Wednesday, November 2, 2011 in Los Angeles, formerly-incarcerated and convicted people, and our allies, from all over the United States will convene to discuss and ratify a National Agenda to restore our civil and human rights. We believe that unity of purpose will allow us to build political power. Many of us are already working on similar campaigns, to achieve the same demands. After November 2, we hope to organize and mobilize other people who have suffered at the hands of the criminal justice system to stand up for our rights around the country. After November 2, we plan to mount unified national campaigns to register voters, to end all forms of discrimination based on arrest or conviction records, to support the human rights of people locked up in cages, and to serve our families and communities.

PLEASE REGISTER NOW to attend the November 2 conference in Los Angeles on this page.

There is no registration fee and no deadline for registering. PLEASE REGISTER NOW so we can plan for food and reserve housing in advance. Our conference will begin with breakfast at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 2, and the convening starting at 9 a.m. in Freedom Hall at the Watts Labor Community Action Center (WLAC) in South Central Los Angeles (10850 South Central Avenue).

TRAVEL and HOUSING: The November 2 convening is 100% self-financed. We have received no grant money so far to organize this event, so we hope everyone will be able to fund-raise for expenses, which we are trying to keep low. Unfortunately, there are no scholarships available for travel or housing for the November 2 convening. If you’re coming from out of town, please plan to travel the day before (November 1). Housing for the night of November 1 will be available near WLCAC at rates of $59-$69 for a double room. Rooms for that night will also be available at the the Westin Bonaventure, in downtown Los Angeles at DPA conference rates — $140 per room for double occupancy rooms.

Here is the form for registering...

New Resource: Attica Prison Uprising 101- A Short Primer

2011-08-18T01:02:00.000-07:00

This publication about the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 is not intended to be a curriculum guide, but a brief primer for educators and organizers. It includes a timeline of events (with primary sources); testimonies from Attica prisoners; poetry by Attica prisoners; sample activities for youth; and other suggested resources.

We do not claim to have addressed all of the complexity of the rebellion in this short document. This is by no means intended to be the definitive word about the context and meaning(s) of the rebellion. We simply offer this resource as another in the long line of publications that have been produced about the Attica uprising. We do so knowing that we will omit a lot important information. This is unavoidable.

We had been looking for exactly this type of resource to foster our own popular education efforts and activism on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Attica rebellion. We didn’t find anything that quite worked so we took it upon ourselves to create what would be useful for us. A core value of ours is to share information with others in order to facilitate movement-building to eradicate incarceration. As such, we share this resource with you.

This primer was produced by organizers and educators rather than by historians. While we tried to be objective, we are not neutral. We state this unabashedly and honestly. We sincerely hope that this material is useful to you if you plan to discuss the Attica uprising with your students, community members, and others. We encourage others in the future to add to our collective knowledge about the Attica Rebellion and its legacy.

If you have any questions about this resource, please feel free to contact Mariame Kaba at mariame@project-nia.org.

Finally, we invite you to freely reproduce and distribute this primer. We ask that it be disseminated at no cost and that Project NIA be acknowledged as producing this resource. We love hearing from folks about how they have used our resources so make sure to drop us a line!

Download the Attica Prison Uprising Short Primer here

Download the Attica Prison Uprising 101 Illustrations Appendix Here

Read more at NIA dispatches here.

Supermax prisons: 21st century asylums

2011-08-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

With thanks to SolitaryWatch for pointing this article by Helen Redmond out to us all...

Al-Jazeera English
August 5th 2011

Solitary confinement in the new dungeons of the US trigger mental illness in prisoners.
Helen Redmond

"People walked by and asked: 'How are you doing?' I answered: 'How am I supposed to be doing? That’s the craziest question I ever heard.' The mental health people asked: 'Are you having any suicidal ideation? What are you thinking right now?' I said: 'Where the f*** am I? That’s what I'm thinking. Ain't this America?'"

- Brian Nelson, on his transfer to Tamms supermax prison in Illinois. He was locked, chained and naked in a holding cell.

The recent hunger strike at Pelican Bay supermax prison in California exposed for three weeks the carefully planned and executed barbarism of life in supermax America. The utter desperation of the human cargo behind the concertina wire, buried deep inside concrete coffins was gut wrenching and heart breaking. Hunger strikes are a tactic of last resort for the completely subjugated; a slow, painful, non-flammable version of self-immolation.

Brian Nelson, a survivor of 12 years in solitary confinement at Tamms supermax prison in Illinois, understands the conditions that drove the men in Pelican Bay to stop eating. Distraught and anxious, Nelson paced in his cell for more than ten hours a day - causing severe, bloody blisters on the soles of his feet. He tried to hang himself. In the year 2000, Nelson went on hunger strike for 42 days with four other prisoners to protest many of the same conditions that exist at Pelican Bay.

The demands of Tamm's hunger strikers were similar, too: better food, shoes with arches, appropriate clothing, access to education, inmates with mental illness be transferred out, bilingual staff and abolition of the "renunciation policy" - the "debriefing policy" related to gangs that Pelican Bay prisoners demanded be abolished. Guards tried to break the hunger strike at Tamms by leaving carts of fried chicken and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the wing. The delicious smells didn't break Nelson.

Supermax prisoners' daily lives are chock full of alienating and undignified experiences, so empty of positive human interaction, thousands are willing to risk death than endure such inhumane conditions. That alone speaks volumes about the reality of life in supermax prisons.

One of the most humiliating aspects of life for inmates are the frequent strip searches - forced to be naked, ordered to bend over by guards and spread the buttocks apart to have the anus inspected for contraband while coughing. Strip searches are the old normal. The photos of nude prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq shocked the world, but to be stripped naked for hours or even days is standard operating procedure in supermaxes.

Nelson explained:

"Every time you leave your cell you're strip searched … They do this to degrade and shock you…Sometimes the guards would make 'homosexual' comments like: 'Hey baby, spread your cheeks'. Darrell Cannon, a survivor of a nine-year stretch in Tamms, described the strip search: 'They tell you to open your mouth, raise your tongue, hold your hands up, they go through your fingers and toes and tell you to turn around and spread your cheeks up against the chuckhole … It's degrading to have two other human beings looking at you like you're some kind of specimen. It is extremely degrading."

Rehabilitation not an option

Prisoners on suicide watch are routinely left naked in their cells. And inmates have been punished by "caging", they're held naked or partially clothed in outdoor holding cages in inclement weather.

There is no pretence of rehabilitation in supermax prisons; the purpose is harsh punishment. Prisoners endure supersized portions of psychological punishment as a result of strict and prolonged solitary confinement. Inmates are confined for 23 to 24 hours a day, every day, in cells that measure 7-by-12 square feet. It is psychological torture.

Supermax prisons are intended to isolate prisoners and to deny human contact. Cannon said:

"Everything you do, you do alone … It [supermax] was designed to break you mentally, by not allowing you to have another human being right there with you that you can interact with."

This extreme environment of sensory deprivation and social seclusion makes men go mad. Supermax prisons are filled with inmates with mental illnesses diagnosed. Laurie "It is a form of insanity to put people in a place that provokes mental illness … Either they went in crazy, or they go crazy once they are there," said Jo Reynolds, an organiser for the Tamms Ten Year Committee and a Soros Justice Fellow.

Prisoners resort to cutting their flesh: A form of self-mutilation that results in thick scarring. Small shavings of concrete, plastic 'sporks' or paper clips are used to cut and cause bleeding to arms, legs and genitals. Cannon remembers some prisoners cutting themselves, "just to feel something … they were willing to do anything to get out of their cell and into the infirmary to be around other people".

Nelson recalled an inmate who continually tightened a piece of string around his finger. It became gangrenous and was amputated. Men who injured themselves told him: "I need the pain, to feel real".

'They're not faking'

"Gassing" is also common in supermax prisons. It is a word used to describe prisoners throwing urine and faeces at guards. Gassing is treated as a security threat and is met with excessive force by a tactical team.

Prison mental health staff label inmates who engage in cutting and gassing as malingering and "acting out", not as suffering from mental illness. And yet there is decades of indisputable, well-documented evidence that solitary confinement causes mental breakdown and self-injurious behaviour.

Dr Terry A Kupers, a psychologist who has conducted hundreds of assessments of prisoners in supermax prisons, explained in an article in the Belleville News-Democrat.

"Twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell causes many inmates to brutally attack themselves," he wrote. "In the adult male population of the United States, self-mutilation occurs only in solitary confinement. It's an epidemic across the country. They're not faking."

"If prisoners stray off the yellow line walking to the shower or exercise cage, they can be shot"

Supermax prisons are modern, high-tech, taxpayer funded concentration camps. The architecture is a twisted blend of Fascist-Stripped-Classical and Functionalist designed to facilitate the One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest punishment of inmates. They are located in rural areas in small, conservative, majority white towns desperate for jobs. Pelican Bay was built on an abandoned logging site and is completely cut off from its surroundings. Tamms supermax is located in the far corner of Illinois in the village of Tamms, population: 724. The remote location of supermax prisons keeps them hidden and away from public scrutiny and protest. Media are not allowed in.

On the perimeter of supermax prisons loom large and imposing guard towers with gun turrets and floodlights that resemble German Flak towers.

The interior of supermax prisons is built on the architectural principles of isolation, surveillance and über-control. Doors and gates are controlled electronically. A panoptic central guard tower is encircled by prisoner "pods" and closed-circuit TV cameras allow guards to see into every cell. Privacy is nonexistent. Concrete cells contain a poured concrete bed, immovable concrete desk/stool, stainless steel sink, toilet and mirror. Metal wire mesh cell doors have a slot to deliver food and other items. Some doors have Plexiglas covers that insulate cells from sound, air and vision.

Architects have partnered with penal authorities to create austere, hermetically sealed dungeons devoid of natural light, colour or beauty. They are milieus full of monotony, guaranteed to provoke mental despair. Architects who build prisons call themselves "justice" architects. In response to that outrageous claim and to the boom in prison building, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (AAPSR) launched a prison design boycott. The organisation acknowledges the barbaric consequences of supermax incarceration and encourages architects to sign a pledge not to do any work that "furthers the construction of prisons or jails".

Daily routines in supermax prisons are rigidly controlled. Prison guards and administration have total power and domination over every aspect of prisoners' lives through a series of capricious rules and regulations that, if broken, result in "tickets", loss of privileges or additional prison time. Inmates' bodies, belongings and cells are subjected to relentless searches, inspection and video monitoring. Authorities decide the number of showers per week (one to five) and the amount of time (15 minutes), exercise time (1 hour), clothes, TV/radio access, food, visitation rights - and can withdraw medication. Inmates aren't allowed to speak to other inmates when outside their cells. If prisoners stray off the yellow line walking to the shower or exercise cage, they can be shot.

The hunger strikers in Pelican Bay sent the world a distress signal: A supermax SOS. They are buried alive but still able to fight against the most appalling prison conditions imaginable. Those of us on the outside have a moral and ethical responsibility to hear and answer that call and fight to shut every supermax prison down.

Helen Redmond is a US-based journalist, commentator, and drug and health policy analyst.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

The Great Incarcerator

2011-08-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

To appear soon in a (prison?)cinema, arthouse near you: Part 1 of The Great Incarcerator: Dark Little Secret, a film by D Jones:
Part one will screen on 9/13/11 at the Lemon Grove in Youngstown, OH. More details to come..

Dark Little Secret is an independent short film, the first of three parts in the series "The Great Incarcerator", exploring the United States prison system and its impact on our society.

Part 2: The Shadow of Lucasville, will focus on prison uprisings and political imprisonment and is currently in production.

Building a Movement to End Solitary Confinement, Against Imprisonment

2011-07-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

From: Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
July 27th 2011

After hunger strike leaders reached an agreement last week with the CDCR to end the hunger strike that swept across California’s prison system, prisoners have started to transition to eating food again. However this transition is both brutal and confusing.

After not eating for four weeks, it is very hard to begin eating solid food again right away, so many prisoners are in need of more medical care than the prisons can provide. Medical staff at the prisons were already overwhelmed by general conditions of overcrowding in the state’s prisons, and even further overwhelmed by this massive protest. While the medical staff supposedly need to follow certain protocols assisting hunger strikers’ transition to eating solid food, provision of basic medical care is exhausted, unreliable and ineffective.

Family members and supporters are anxiously waiting confirmation on whether or not prisoners are continuing the strike at other prisons. When the hunger strike spread to at least 13 prisons, and at least 6,600 people across the state were participating, it was clear that prisoners joining were doing so in solidarity with the demands from Pelican Bay due to the brutal conditions they are held in resembling the conditions of Pelican Bay. For instance, prisoners at Calipatria have explained that they joined the hunger strike specifically in protest of the torturous formal and informal policies of group punishment, gang validation and debriefing–practices also imposed at Calipatria. Prisoners at Calipatria are now transitioning to eating food again, according to family members of prisoners participating in the hunger strike.

There has been some mention of prisoners at Corcoran and Tehachapi continuing the strike to expose specific issues at these particular institutions, but supporters do not have confirmation, such as how many prisoners are still refusing food and for what specific reasons or demands [In the early days of the hunger strike, prisoners at the SHU in Corcoran released this statement explaining why they were in solidarity with the demands from Pelican Bay, but we have not heard of other specifics beside medical updates since]

Outside community organizations that correspond with prisoners are scurrying to send in updates on the strike and confirming the agreement between the strike leaders at Pelican Bay and the CDCR, but since the CDCR relies heavily on denying mail as a tool of isolation and political repression, supporters are unsure if their messages are getting through.

As mentioned yesterday, the hunger strike leaders at Pelican Bay released a written statement providing some explanation for their reasoning behind accepting the CDCR’s deal. Their concerns include not wanting fellow prisoners to die. At least 17 hunger strikers at Pelican Bay, including 3 of the 11 leaders, were transferred to Corcoran for supposed medical reasons, however the CDCR failed to mention that Corcoran got clearance to begin forced-feeding days before hunger strike leaders accepted the CDCR’s offer, a clear threat of what could happen to the leadership and their comrades if they did not agree to the CDCR’s terms.

While the concessions may seem too small to claim a victory, it’s important for people outside prison to understand the weight for prisoners who have been held in the SHU for decades of now being able to stay a little warmer, and to be able to keep track of time since they have no windows and the fluorescent lights are on 24 hours of every day. More so, worldwide support and momentous courage of thousands of prisoners to risk their lives effectively pressured the CDCR to sit at the same table and look prisoners in the face and offer a deal, after refusing to negotiate for weeks and insisting prisoners are less-than human.

Yesterday, dozens of supporters gathered on a continental conference call in support of the hunger strike, and discussed how to move forward now and keep pressure on the CDCR to implement the necessary changes brought to the world’s attention by the strike.

One focus of the conference call became mobilizing for the legislative hearings on August 23rd, a hearing on the SHU at Pelican Bay that will be held by the Public Safety Committee of the CA State Assembly in Sacramento. Many supporters are focusing on coordinating (inter)national days of action leading up to the legislative hearing periodically throughout the next few weeks. If you are interested in coordinating an action in a city or town near you in coordination with events in other cities, please contact us and we’ll get you in touch with other supporters organizing days of action. Read notes from the conference call here.

World Can’t Wait is calling for an International Day of Action on Monday, August 1st. Click here for more information.

As we work to consolidate a growing movement against solitary confinement, torture and all violence, we need to support all prisoners and political leaders locked up in prisons, jails and detention centers internationally. In the next few days, make sure to support Leonard Peltier, who has been locked up for more than 30 years and is currently in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania, by calling and emailing prison officials and demand that Leonard Peltier be immediately released from solitary and returned to the general population at USP-Lewisburg. Click here for contact information

Statement of Solidarity With the California (Pelican Bay, Corcoran and other prisons) Prison (SHU) Hunger Strike

2011-07-05T03:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity,

Thank you for all your good work in getting the word out! We from the Prison Watch Network want to show our Solidarity with those on hunger strike and their supporters and loved ones. We hope and pray that your action will be heard and that you are able to change the ways you are being treated, making a difference for all of us.
We blog and collect signatures for the petition.

Sincerely, in Solidarity,

Prisonwatchnetwork.org:

Californiaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Arizonaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Nevadaprisonwatch.org

Ohioprisonwatch.blogpot.com

Pennsylvaniaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Georgiaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Louisianaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Alabamaprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Mississippiprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Hawaiiprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Wisconsinprisonervoice.blogspot.com

Maineprisonwatch.blogspot.com

Utah, Illinois, Virginia, Colorado, Washington State, Texas, Imprisoned Women Prison Watch, Immigrant Detention Watch, Juvenile Prison Watch and more State Prison Watch blogs.

Lundbeck and pentobarbital: pharma takes a stand against executions

2011-07-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

The decision by the Danish firm to ban use of pentobarbital as a US execution drug may deal a fatal blow to capital punishment.

The Guardian
David Nicholl, Friday 1 July 2011

Article history
Pentobarbital: Danish manufacturer Lundbeck has now prohibited its use in the US as an execution drug. Photograph: Alessandro Della Bella/AP

The announcement by Danish pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck on Friday that it is restricting the distribution of pentobarbital represents a landmark decision. This is the first time that a major global pharmaceutical company has taken such direct action to tighten up its supply chain to ensure that its drugs are used to benefit the health of patients, not assist in state-sponsored execution. It follows months of pressure from human rights advocates. At the end of last year, US death row states found it difficult to get access to the previous drug, thiopental, for executions following an export ban from the UK.

Lethal injection is perceived as a more medical, and hence humane, method than hanging, stoning, shooting or electrocution. Yet the medicalisation of executions is an abomination of medical ethics, banned by all medical professional bodies, including the American Medical Association. Doctors' prime purpose is to help patients: "first do no harm" should be a doctor's credo, not assist in state-sponsored killing. Previously, the attention of human rights campaigners has been directed at the physicians and healthcare staff who have assisted in executions. Lundbeck's remarkable decision has, in effect, set an industry standard that no drug company should allow their products to be used for executions, even if without their authority.

To date, 17 people have been executed using the novel, and hence untested, pentobarbital regime. The most recent to die, Roy Blakenship, was executed last week. Witnesses reported that he "appeared to grimace" and that he "jerked his head several times throughout the procedure and muttered after the pentobarbital was injected into his veins before he died". One medical expert, Dr David Waisel, has testified that "I can say with certainty that Mr [Roy] Blankenship was inadequately anesthetised and was conscious for approximately the first three minutes of the execution and that he suffered greatly."

Few doctors involved in executions have been prepared to go public. One who has, Dr Carlo Musso, was directly involved in Blakenship's execution. Dr Musso stated his opposition to the death penalty in a 2006 interview. Then, Dr Musso perceived his role as a palliative care physician on death row. "It just seems wrong for us to walk away, to abdicate our responsibility to the patients," he said at the time.

Read the rest here.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted today to retroactively apply the amended guidelines resulting from The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

2011-07-01T01:23:00.000-07:00

From The Real Cost of Prisons:

Very good news! The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted today to retroactively apply the amended guidelines resulting from The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted today to retroactively apply the amended guidelines resulting from The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to prisoners who were incarcerated under the earlier, harsher 100 to 1 crack cocaine sentencing law. Today’s decision means that some prisoners sentenced before the law went into affect – 12,000 people – could have their guideline sentences reduced by 3 years, on average.

The Commission came to its decision after receiving public comments from over 40,000 citizens who supported retroactivity of the guidelines and heard testimony from a broad spectrum of witnesses at a June 1 hearing.

Press Release: Pelican Bay Prisoners Go On Hunger Strike to Protest Grave Conditions

2011-06-30T01:28:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—June 29, 2011

Pelican Bay Prisoners Go On Hunger Strike to Protest Grave Conditions

Lawyers, Advocates, Organizations Hold Press Conference, Voice Prisoner Demands

Press Contact: Isaac Ontiveros
Communications Director, Critical Resistance

Office: 510 444 0484
Cell: 510 517 6612

What: Press Conference

When: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:00am

Where: Elihu M. Harris State of California Office Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland, CA

Oakland—Prisoners at the notorious Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, CA will initiate an indefinite hunger strike on July 1st, 2011 to protest condition in the prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU). Lawyers and advocates who have been in contact with the prisoners will hold a press conference Thusday June 30th at the Oakland Federal Building, at 11am to rally support for the strike and put pressure on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to respond to the prisoners’ demands.

Prisoners have delivered their demands to Pelican Bay warden Greg Lewis, the CDCR, and to Governor Jerry Brown. Their demands include an end to long-term solitary confinement, collective punishment, and forced interrogation on gang affiliation. The prisoners have also stated that they are willing to give up their lives unless their demands are met.

"The prisoners inside the SHU at Pelican Bay know the risk that they are taking going on hunger strike,” says Manuel LaFontaine, of All of Us or None, an organization that supports former prisoners and part of a Bay Area-based Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition supporting Pelican Bay’s prisoners. La Fontaine continues, “The CDCR must recognize that the SHU produces conditions of grave violence, such that people lose their lives in there all the time." U.S. and international human rights organizations have condemned Security Housing Units as having cruel, inhumane, and torturous conditions. SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6 by 10 foot cells, 23½ hours a day, for years at a time. The CDCR operates four Security Housing Units in its system at Corcoran,California Correctional Institution, Valley State Prison for Women as well as Pelican Bay.

Recent work and hunger strikes in Georgia and Ohio prisons were successful in both winning some concessions and alerting the public to the conditions inside US prisons. "People who are in prison are already being punished. They are still human beings and should not have to lose their civil and human rights" says Karen Shain, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

Pelican Bay’s hunger strike begins amidst the recent landmark Supreme Court ruling condemning California’s prison overcrowding and order the reduction of its population by at least 33,000 people. At the center of the overcrowding ruling were dozens of prisoner deaths a year due to the lack of basic medical and other healthcare. Thursday’s Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity press conference will touch off several events happening in cities across North America in the coming weeks.

Legal workers, advocates, and experts on the California prison system will be available for comment and interviews.
###
Sent to us per email.

Wal-Mart, Martori Farms and Women in Prison Labor: "I Ain't Gonna Work On Martori's Farm No More"

2011-06-30T00:55:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the contact email for Wal-Mart's "ethics" office. Please take a minute and write them about the horrific labor conditions for the women at Perryville. Wal-Mart's Global Ethics Office can be emailed at ethics@wal-mart.com.

"I Ain't Gonna Work On Martori's Farm No More"
Posted: 06/29/11
By Al Norman, Founder, Sprawl-Busters
in: Huffington Post

For the past 20 years, Wal-Mart has fed its stores with agricultural produce from a company called Martori Farms. According to Hoover's profile of the company, Martori is "a fruit and vegetable grower, packer, shipper, and wholesaler and is the largest commercial agricultural company in Arizona.

The agra business was "hand-picked" by Wal-Mart, and in 2007, the giant retailer showcased Martori Farms as part of its "Salute To America's Farmers" program. The Martori farm operations took seed in the 1930s Arizona soil, later specializing in melons and broccoli. The company today has 3 major locations in Arizona, and one site in California. One of its holdings contains more than 15,000 arcres of farmland.

Wal-Mart has described its relationship with Martori Farms as an example of "fruitful collaboration." The retailer's first 35 superstores were stocked with organic cantaloupes from Martori Farms. "Our relationship with Martori Farms is an excellent example of the kind of collaboration we strive for with our suppliers," a Wal-Mart spokesman said four years ago. "Wal-Mart buys more United States agricultural products than any other retailer in the world and we're proud to salute American farmers like Martori Farms."

But new allegations about the use of prison labor at the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Martori Farms could blight the fruitful relationship between the retailer and the farmer.

For almost 20 years, Wal-Mart has had a clear policy forbidding the use of prison labor by its vendors. "Since 1992 Wal-Mart has required its supplier-partners to comply with a stringent code of conduct," Wal-Mart said in a 1997 press statement. "This code requires factories producing merchandise for Wal-Mart to be automatically denied manufacturing certification if inspections reveal...evidence of forced or prison labor."

The Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) has supplied prisoner labor for private agricultural businesses for almost 20 years. For at least the last four years, the state of Arizona has fined employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. Farmers responded by calling up the ADC for workers. "We are contacted almost daily by different companies needing labor," the manager of the business development unit of Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI) told the Christian Science Monitor in 2007. "Maybe it was labor that was undocumented before, and they don't want to take the risk anymore because of possible consequences, so they are looking to inmate labor as a possible alternative.

One of those businesses that turned to prison labor was Wal-Mart's vendor, Martori Farms. According to a disturbing story published June 24th by Truth-Out.org,(http://www.truth-out.org/abusive-conditions-martori-farms/1308844017) Martori Farms "pays its imprisoned laborers two dollars per hour, not including the travel time to and from the farm." Women from the Arizona state prison complex at Perryville Unit are assigned to work at Martori Farms." Arizona law requires that all able bodied inmates work.

One of the women prisoners at Martori Farms told Truth-Out: "We work eight hours regardless of conditions .... We work in the fields hoeing weeds and thinning plants ... Currently we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break we get a MAJOR ticket which takes away our 'good time'!!! We are told we get 'two' 15 minute breaks and a half hour lunch like a normal job but it's more like 10 minutes and 20 minutes. They constantly yell at us we are too slow and to speed up because we are costing $150 an acre in labor and that's not acceptable... In addition, the prison has sent women to work on the farms regardless of their medical conditions."

Wal-Mart's focus on labor conditions has basically been in Third World producer nations, not on domestic shores. In 1997, Wal-Mart wrote: "The issue of global sourcing and factory conditions is very important to Wal-Mart and to our suppliers. Since 1992, we have spent enormous amounts of time and money to assure compliance with our standards and there has been much improvement."

Yet here in America, prisoners are working under intolerable conditions picking produce for Wal-Mart superstores. In its Standards for Suppliers, Wal-Mart acknowledges that "the conduct of Wal-Mart's suppliers can be attributed to Wal-Mart and its reputation." If for no other reason than to protect its reputation, Wal-Mart should take immediate action against Martori Farms. Such actions should include:

1. an unannounced inspection of working conditions at Martori Farms by an independent auditor

2. enforcement of the Wal-Mart's own Conditions for Employment, including fair compensation of wages and benefits which are in compliance with the local and national laws, reasonable employee work hours in compliance with local standards, with employees not working in excess of the statutory requirements without proper compensation as required by applicable law.

As long as Wal-Mart allows Martori Farms to exploit its prison workers, Wal-Mart is complicit in the scheme. This arrangement violates the company's ethical sourcing standards. Such working conditions are not right in Sri Lanka, not right in Bangladesh, and they are not right in Scottsdale Arizona either.

The next time you squeeze a melon at Wal-Mart, think about the prison farmworkers who got squeezed to produce it.

Wal-Mart's Global Ethics Office can be emailed at ethics@wal-mart.com.

Al Norman is the founder of Sprawl-Busters, and is the author of organizer's classic big box story, Slam-DunkingWal-Mart.

Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/i-aint-gonna-work-on-mart_b_886596.html

Five myths about Americans in prison

2011-06-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

June 20, 2011

In: Washington Post
By Marc Mauer and David Cole, Published: June 17

No country on Earth imprisons more people per capita than the United States. But for America, mass incarceration has proved a losing proposition. The Supreme Court recently found California’s overcrowded prisons unconstitutional, and state legislators want to cut the vast amounts of public money spent on prison warehousing.

Why are so many Americans in prison, and which ones can be safely released? Let’s address some common misunderstandings about our incarceration problem.

1. Crime has fallen because incarceration has risen.
U.S. crime rates are the lowest in 40 years, but it’s not clear how much of this drop is a result of locking up more people.

In Canada, for example, violent crime declined in the 1990s almost as much as it did in the United States. Yet, Canada’s prison population dropped during this time, and its per capita incarceration rate is about one-seventh that of the United States. Moreover, while U.S. incarceration rates have steadily risen for four decades, our crime rate has fluctuated — rising through the 1970s, falling and then rising in the 1980s, and falling since 1993.

Harvard University sociologist Bruce Western believes that increased incarceration accounts for only about 10 percent of the drop in crime rates; William Spelman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, puts the figure at about 25 percent. Even if the higher figure is accurate, three-quarters of the crime decline had nothing to do with imprisonment. Other causes include changes in drug markets, policing strategies and community initiatives to reshape behavior.

2. The prison population is rising because more people are being sentenced to prison. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of people sent to prison grew mainly because of the war on drugs. The number of drug offenders sentenced to state prisons increased by more than 300 percent from 1985 to 1995.
Since then, however, longer prison terms more than new prison sentences have fueled the prison population expansion. These are a result of mandatory sentencing measures such as “three strikes” laws and limits on parole release. Today, 140,000 prisoners, or one of 11 inmates, are incarcerated for life, many with no chance of parole.

Longer stays in prison offer diminishing returns for public safety. As prisoners age, the likelihood that they will commit crimes drops, but the cost of their imprisonment rises, primarily because of increased medical care. Harsher sentences also offer little deterrence: When people consider committing crimes, they may think about whether they will be caught, but probably not about how harshly they will be punished. In 1999, the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University reviewed studies of deterrence and sentencing and found no basis “for inferring that increasing the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects.”

3. Helping prisoners rejoin society will substantially reduce the prison population. Ninety-five percent of American prisoners will return home someday. While reentry programs can aid reintegration into the community, they do little to reduce our reliance on incarceration. Prison appears to make inmates as likely to commit crime as not; about half of released inmates return to prison within three years. Congress appropriated only $83 million for reentry in fiscal year 2011, or less than $120 per released prisoner. Even with additional state funds, one is not likely to overcome a lifetime of low educational attainment, substance abuse and/or mental health disabilities with this meager commitment.

Investing in prevention and treatment instead of imprisonment is more likely to shrink the prison population. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy, for example, found that home-based supervision of juvenile offenders produced $28 in taxpayer benefits for every dollar invested.
4. There’s a link between race and crime. Yes, African Americans and Latinos disproportionately commit certain crimes. But in a 1996 study of crime rates in Columbus, Ohio, criminologists from Ohio State University concluded that socioeconomic disadvantages “explain the overwhelming portion of the difference in crime.”

Nowhere are racial disparities in criminal justice more evident than in drug law enforcement. In 2003, black men were nearly 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than white men. Yet, national household surveys show that whites and African Americans use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates. African Americans, who are 12 percent of the population and about 14 percent of drug users, make up 34 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 45 percent of those serving time for such offenses in state prisons. Why?

In large measure, because police find drugs where they look for them. Inner-city, open-air drug markets are easier to bust than those that operate out of suburban basements, and numerous studies show that minorities are stopped by police more often than whites. For example, a Center for Constitutional Rights study found that 87 percent of the 575,000 people stopped by the police in New York City in 2009 were African American or Latino.

5. Racial disparities in incarceration reflect police and judges’ racial prejudice.

Shocking instances of racism still come to light in the justice system. But racist cops and courts are not the primary reason for racial disparities in incarceration.

Consider increased penalties for drug offenses in school zones. Though not racially motivated, these laws disproportionately affect minorities, who more often live in densely populated urban areas with many nearby schools. In New Jersey, for example, 96 percent of people incarcerated under such laws in 2005 were African American or Latino. Judges didn’t necessarily want to sentence these defendants to more prison time than those convicted outside school zones, but under the law, they had to.

Where we spend money also contributes to the problem. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 appropriated $9.7 billion for prisons and $13.6 billion for law enforcement, but only $6.1 billion for crime prevention. Politicians eager to be seen as tough on crime too often find ways to fund new prison cells, even though they know that minorities will predominantly fill them. This isn’t the fault of racist individuals. It’s the fault of a system that fails to take the promise of equality seriously.

The United States imprisons a larger proportion of its population than Russia or Belarus. Our incarceration rate is eight times that of France. These tragic statistics force us to ask: Would the American public accept these rates if incarceration were distributed more equally across race and class?

mauer@sentencingproject.org
cole@law.georgetown.edu

Marc Mauer is executive director of the Sentencing Project. David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Want to challenge everything you know? Visit our “Five myths” archive.

California organizations outline smart, safe prison population reduction strategies

2011-06-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Prisonwatch International ⋅ June 19, 2011

by Emily Harris
Via the SF Bay View
June 18th 2011

Oakland – In response to the May 23 Supreme Court ruling on California prison overcrowding, a statewide alliance of over 40 organizations known as Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) is pushing the state to take up a number of strategies that would make substantial reductions in the prison population while potentially freeing up billions of dollars for programs and services devastated by California’s budget crisis.

CURB, which works to both shrink California’s prison population and end costly prison and jail construction, released “The Budget for Humanity” in March of this year. “The Budget for Humanity” outlines a series of smart and safe strategies that California could push forward to reduce the prison population in compliance with the Supreme Court decision. These strategies include:

- Reforming drug sentencing laws by making possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
- Eliminating return-to-custody as a sanction for administrative and technical parole violations.
- Making low-level, non-violent property offenses misdemeanors instead of “wobblers” which can be charged as a felony.
- Repealing or amending the three strikes law so that the second and third strike must also be classified as “serious or violent.”
- Providing education and/or job training to every person in prison.
- Expanding “good time” credits.
- Providing independent community-based drug, mental health treatment and reentry services to people coming home from prison.
- Releasing or discharging all people who are terminally ill and permanently medically incapacitated by expanding medical parole and utilizing compassionate release.
- Releasing elderly prisoners.
- Paroling term-to-life prisoners who are parole eligible.
- Amending or repealing juvenile life without parole convictions
- Releasing people who are “mentally ill” to community-based mental health treatment programs.

CURB points out that most of these strategies have been safely and sustainably implemented in other states across the U.S. Additionally, CURB’s Budget for Humanity argues vehemently against jail and prison bed expansion to address overcrowding. CURB calls prison and jail construction a “false solution” to the Supreme Court ruling and continues to criticize the billions of dollars of prison construction spending authorized by California’s controversial AB 900 lease revenue bond.

To view CURB’s 50 ways to reduce the number of people in prison in California visit http://curbprisonspending.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/50waysCurb.pdf.

Emily Harris is statewide coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB). She can be reached at (510) 435-1176 or emily@curbprisonspending.org.

SAMs — The Creepy, Inhumane Legal Weapon the State Uses to Break Prisoners

2011-06-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

Posted by Prisonwatch International ⋅ June 16, 2011

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on June 13, 2011, Printed on June 16, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/151280/hedges%3A_sams_–_the_creepy%2C_inhumane_legal_weapon_the_state_uses_to_break_prisoners

This article first appeared on Truthdig. [link is wrong]

In Franz Kafka’s short story “Before the Law”a tireless supplicant spends his life praying for admittance into the courts of justice. He sits outside the law court for days, months and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted. He sacrifices everything he owns to sway or bribe the stern doorkeeper. He ages, grows feeble and finally childish. He is told as he nears death that the entrance was constructed solely for him and it will now be closed.

Justice has become as unattainable for Muslim activists in the United States as it was for Kafka’s frustrated petitioner. The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, wasting away in supermax prisons. These citizens posed no security threat. But they dared to speak a truth about the sordid conduct of our nation that the state found unpalatable. And in the bipartisan war on terror, waged by Republicans and Democrats, this ugly truth in America is branded seditious.

The best the U.S. government could offer as evidence of Fahad’s crimes was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment and that the acquaintance eventually delivered these to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government is overly concerned with a suitcase full of waterproof socks taken to Pakistan. The reason Fahad Hasmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College. Fahad was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were to me unpalatable, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, he accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.

It has been a year since his 15-year sentence was pronounced in a New York courtroom. He is now held in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colo. He is isolated in a small cell for 22 to 23 hours a day. He has only extremely limited contact with his mother, father and brother, often going weeks without any communication. Between his transfer to Florence last August and this March he was permitted only one phone call. The rule of law in America, especially if you are Muslim, fits Kafka’s grim parody. The tyranny we impose on those held in Guantanamo, Bagram and the secret CIA “black sites” we impose on ourselves. This is and always has been the disease of empire. Empire imports the crude and brutal tools of control and violence back to the homeland. It creates internal as well as external colonies.

We no longer have freedom; there is only the appearance of freedom. We are consumed by an endless and vague war on terror in which the perfidiousness of our enemy, whose number, location and nature are never clearly defined, justifies the shredding of constitutional rights, torture, kidnapping, detentions without charges or trials and an occult-like battle against an absolute evil. And if you think the state intends to limit itself to the persecution of Muslims, especially once there is an increase in domestic unrest and instability, you know little about human history.

I spoke Saturday night to Fahad Hashmi’s father, Syed Anwar Hashmi. The elder Hashmi came to the United States from Pakistan when Fahad was 3 and his other son, Faisal, was 4. He worked for more than two decades as an accountant for the city of New York. He came, as most immigrants have, for his children. He believed in America, in its fairness, its chances for opportunity, its freedoms. And then it all crumbled when the state proved as capricious and cruel as the Pakistani dictatorship he had left behind. On the day of his son’s arrest, he says, “my American dream became an American nightmare.”

Read the rest here…

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

© 2011 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151280/

California: Pelican Bay SHU Hunger Strike starts July 1

2011-05-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

From California Prison Focus:

Five Core Demands *** Formal Complaint

April 25, 2011

Dear Supporters of Prisoner and Human Rights,

On July 1, 2011, between 50 and 100 prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), Corridor D, are going on an indefinite hunger strike. The D corridor (also known as the "short" corridor) has the highest level of restricted incarceration in the state and among the most severe conditions in the nation. The rules of their confinement are extremely harsh in order to force them to "debrief" or offer up information about criminal or prison gang activity of other prisoners. Most inmates in the SHU are not members or associates of prison gangs, as the PBSP staff claims, and even those who are put their lives and the lives of their families and other prisoners at risk if they debrief.

Using conditions of severe mental and physical harm in order to force prisoners into confessing is torture! Many debriefers simply make up information about other prisoners just to escape the isolation units. This misinformation is then used to validate other prisoners as members or associates of prison gangs who in reality have nothing to do whatsoever with gang activity.

California Prison Focus recently interviewed some of those who are leading this hunger strike and we will be taking a number of key steps to publicize this event. This widespread hunger strike has the potential to become the most significant event in California prison reform in the last decade. Public support is crucial. Please stay in touch with California Prison Focus and other prison organizations who are supporting this hunger strike.

Attached are two documents. The first lays out the five core demands of the hunger strikers. The second is their formal complaint which outlines how the conditions of their imprisonment constitute human rights violations and violate both US and international law.

In support,

California Prison Focus

Press release: Thrower of minuscule object becomes political prisoner in The Netherlands

2011-05-18T04:02:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
By Krapuul.nl

Mr. Erwin Lensink is Being Held in a High Security Prison and Committed to Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment After Throwing a Tealight Holder at Dutch Queen’s Golden Carriage

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, May 17, 2011

In the Netherlands, traditionally, the third Tuesday of September (called Prince’s Day) the reigning monarch of the Netherlands (currently Queen Beatrix) addresses a joint session of the Dutch Senate and House of Representatives. A small incident occurred during last year’s Prince’s Day (2010), which has lead to what many Dutch citizens believe a miscarriage of justice, as it has created the country’s very own political prisoner, Mr. Erwin Lensink, better known as the “waxinelichtgooier” or tealight-thrower.

During Prince’s Day 2010, the Queen, accompanied by some other members of the royal family, left Noordeinde Palace in the Golden Carriage for the Binnenhof (The Hague, the Netherlands), the venue of her speech. She was escorted by court dignitaries and a military escort of honour. Along the procession trail the public usually stands behind fences. Among the gathered public in 2010 was Lensink, a Dutch citizen who is of the opinion that the Dutch royal family consists of Nazis and traitors. This is a controversial issue that has haunted the royal family since decades. Standing among the public, seven meters away from the carriage, Lensink threw a small tealightholder in the direction of the Golden Carriage (which is equipped with bulletproof windows). Lensink was immediately apprehended.

Lensink has been incarcerated since September 2010 at a High Security Prison, along with convicted murderers and suspected terrorists. But what really bothers many Dutch citizens is that Lensink is also being heavily medicated due to the diagnosis that he suffers from severe delusions, a claim that is not without controversy. The Attorney’s Office is trying to have Lensink sentenced to TBS (Ter beschikkingstelling: involuntary commitment), which is a practice of placing a person in a psychiatric hospital or ward against his will. In the real world this could result in life without parole.

The way this controversial case has evolved, with outrageous claims by a psychologist and a psychiatrist, gives the impression to many Dutch citizens that the royal family is still pulling many strings in the Netherlands, stands above the law, and enjoys preferential judicial treatment.

In a special petition addressed to the Dutch government, started just days ago, already more than 200 people have expressed their concerns about the Lensink affair, the so-called “tealightgate” scandal.

This press release is distributed by krapuul.nl, an independent online political news & opinion site, specializing in anti-fascist and anti-corruption news and opinion.

For more information on the High Security Prison where Lensink is being held: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuw_Vosseveld

For a short commentary on the Lensink case: http://www.krapuul.nl/blog/35610/waarom-erwin-lensink-de-waxinewerper-vrij-moet/ (Dutch)

For the petition: http://petities.nl/petitie/laat-de-waxinewerper-vrij-nu (Dutch)

For communication/interview with the krapuul.nl staff, please email info@krapuul.nl (also for interview in English)

PLEASE NOTE: International press is allowed to run this story without any reservations whatsoever. Copyright free.

Angola 3 News: The Real Cost of Prisons -- An interview with Lois Ahrens

2011-05-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

By Angola 3 News

Lois Ahrens is the Founder/Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) and has been an activist/organizer for more than 40 years. First started in 2001, RCPP brings together justice activists, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work together to end the U.S. prison nation. RCPP created workshops, a website that includes sections of writing and ‘comix’ by prisoners, a daily news blog focused on mass incarceration and three comic books that were first created in 2005: Prisoners Town: Paying the Price, by artist Kevin Pyle and writer Craig Gilmore; Prisoners of the War on Drugs, by artist Sabrina Jones and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens; and Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by artist Susan Willmarth and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens.

Hundreds of organizations around the country use the comix in workshops, outreach and organizing. 135,000 have been printed, while over 115,000 have been sent, free of charge, to organizations and thousands of people held in prisons and jails. Due to lack of funding, Prison Town is now out of print and Prisoners of A Hard Life will soon be as well. Prisoners of the War on Drugs is still available. Print-ready versions of all three are available to view and download here.

In 2008, the three comix were published in an anthology, edited by Ahrens, entitled The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, (PM Press, 2008). Through the RCPP, Ahrens has been fortunate to have built an extensive correspondence with prisoners, which has grown into working relationships and friendships. In Massachusetts where she lives, Ahrens is involved in working to stop the state from charging $5/day jail fees to convicted prisoners and those held "pretrial." She is also working to stop new "3 Strikes" legislation from being passed.

Angola 3 News: Who is your target audience and what is the message that you are communicating with the comix?

Lois Ahrens: The comic books were created to communicate complex ideas in language that could be easily understood despite the fact that they are filled with information, research, analysis and a glossary. We wanted them to look and feel like comic books since people are not intimidated by comic books.

Initially, my goal was to create useful materials for organizers working to challenge and change punitive and destructive drug policies, activists opposing the building of new prisons and jails, as well as educators, and health workers. After publishing the comic books, we realized that prisoners were extremely interested. Comic books have been sent to prisoners every day since April 2005, with many requesting that comics be sent to family members and other prisoners.

The comic books place an individual’s experience in a political context by describing how the prison system is built on racism, sexism, and economic inequality. They include alternatives to the current reality so that readers can strategize and act to make change no matter where they are. The goal of the comic books is to politicize.

A3N: Have you ever had problems from prison authorities when sending comic books to prisoners?

LA: Yes. I think of this as the “tyranny of the mail room.” Often an individual working in a mail room sends the comic books back. Generally, I have found county jails are the worst in turning back comic books. For prisoners who are in “administrative segregation” there are often rules against receiving materials. Because the Real Cost of Prisons is the publisher of the comic books, usually, after a phone call, or an appeal letter, comic books do get in. Since comic books have been sent to prisoners in every state, I always cite many examples of other prisons within that system where they have been accepted. I appeal every refusal.

Interestingly, women’s prisons are more apt to return comic books; however, once I write and say that a prison for men in that state has accepted them, they do get in.

A3N: In your 2008 book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix you wrote that “every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated [now 2.4 million], with more than 5 million more on parole and probation.” Subsequently, the US has become the world’s #1 jailer. According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, only China, with 1,620,000 prisoners, and the Russian Federation, with 819,200 prisoners, have a total prison population that is remotely close to the US.

Furthermore, with 751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, the US also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The Russian Federation is second with 577 per 100,000 and China is 116th with 120 per 100,000. How do you explain this astonishing level of mass imprisonment in the US during the last 40 years? What are the forces behind this and why have they employed this particular strategy?

LA: In the workshops we first developed, in our trainings, and in the comic books, we wanted to create a bigger picture about how we came to this place. To do this, I think we need to understand how Ronald Reagan and the neo-liberal agenda came to power in 1980 by using covert and overt racist messages fabricating the myth of the welfare queen, capitalizing on fears of affirmative action, tearing away at the gains made in civil rights movement---specifically voting rights—while fostering alarm about rampant crime.

The racist sub-text of the neo-liberal political agenda succeeded in creating acceptance of mass incarceration while simultaneously creating the laws and industries to police, prosecute, cage and control millions of people—almost all poor people and people of color.

Neo-liberal policies have been in place for more than thirty years. As a result many people are not aware that our current political and economic situation is not the result of a natural course of events, but rather, of a systemically created ideology that has pervaded every aspect of our daily lives. Deregulation and globalization have caused: the loss of U.S. manufacturing by outsourcing; corporate agriculture and the disappearance of the family farm; reduction of protections for workers; huge decreases in number of unionized workers; privatization of hospitals, water, education, prisons, and the military; drastic cuts in public spending for welfare, public schools, public transportation, housing, and job training. These policies have created huge disparities in wealth.

Democrats and Republicans capitalized on this “perfect storm”. They ran and won on “tough on crime” platforms and passed legislation that has resulted in one in 31 people now under the thumb of the criminal justice system.

A3N: The corporate media’s support for the prison system has ranged from stoking public fears by over-reporting crime, to portraying prisoners as pampered and over-privileged. The comic books, therefore, provide an important counter-narrative. A major focus of the comic books has been the so-called “war on drugs.” Why do you feel that this issue is so important?

LA: Of the more than 2.4 million people imprisoned, more than one million are African Americans. Almost 5 million men and women are on probation and parole, a disproportionate number due to the “war on drugs.” (According to a Pew Report in March 2009, “One in 11 African-Americans are under correctional control, one in 27 Latinos, and one in 45 white people are in prison, jail, or under correctional supervision.”)

The war on drugs includes aggressive policing, centralized data bases for people stopped and frisked for no cause, surveillance cameras in streets and buildings, police or security in schools, and SWAT teams for communities as small as 25,000, and long and punitive mandatory sentences.

>From its inception, African-Americans and their communities were the primary target of the war on drugs. In terms of drug use: African Americans constitute 13% of the nation’s monthly drug users, 37% of drug possession arrests, 56% of drug possession convictions, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.

There are mandatory sentences for drug convictions and disproportionate sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine. After years of organizing against this, the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has changed from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, with no retroactivity for those already convicted under the old law. 80% of people sentenced to crack cocaine charges are African American.

A3N: What have been the consequences of this mass incarceration, fueled by the war on drugs?

LA: The consequences for individuals, families and communities are huge, cumulative, and long-lasting. According to Dina Rose and Todd Clear, in African American communities where 15 to 20% of adults are incarcerated community stability is undermined, resulting in more crime instead of less crime, especially when aggressive policing is added. In addition to less safety, what are the effects of removing the earning and spending power of so many who are incarcerated? What are the long term costs of the disruption of the family as both an economic and emotional unit?

There are other costs and consequences of the punitive legislation especially directed at people with felony drug convictions---read African Americans---that prevent them from creating a sustainable life once they leave prison. These include, for some, a ban on higher education and vocational training, as well as a ban on receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) if convicted of possessing or selling drugs, although some states have opted out. Legislation in 1996 and 1998 also prevented people with felony drug convictions and their families from federally subsidized housing, serving to increase homelessness and make family reunification much more difficult—for women especially. For women who are incarcerated, there is always the possibility of losing custody of their children.

A3N: How has the corporate media presented the war on drugs? Strategically speaking, how do you think activists can best confront this and work to publicly discredit the war on drugs?

LA: The media has portrayed the war on drugs as a fantasy of good vs. evil. There is little or no acknowledgement of the truth about who is targeted and why, of the system’s cruelty and destructiveness, nor of its lasting consequences to people’s lives, the evisceration of communities, and the bankrupting of governments. Only now, with huge state budget deficits, have some states begun to look at what 40 years of these policies have created; not because they think they are unconscionable, but because they are no longer financial sustainable. If they could find a way to continue to finance the bloated prisons and jails, I don’t think they would be looking for alternatives.

Despite this, I do think there is a small opening now to look at the catastrophic “war on drugs.” Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, details how in many ways, the war on drugs has created a more potent, strangulating and oppressive system than the old Jim Crow.

I agree with her and think this framework can re-energize people who took part in the Civil Rights and Black Empowerment movements of the 1960’s and millions who did not. I believe that what is important about her book is that she articulates the convergence of economic, legal, legislative, governmental policies and political forces which led to the mass incarceration of African Americans.

To overturn these policies and the beliefs on which they were built, we must understand the complexities of why and how they have been put in place. Then we can build the new and strong movement we need now.

A3N: Alongside the printed comic books, how do you use the RCPP?

LA: Early on, we developed a website and a little after that a news blog. Together, every day they receive a minimum of 2000 unique visitors. The website is filled with new research, links to hundreds of organizations, and the comic books. A few years ago I began adding political writing and comix by prisoners. This is now a big part of the website. People inside and outside the country are now using the comix and essays in other publications, which is how I had hoped it would work.

As the website has developed, so has a list-serve that keeps me connected to hundreds of organizers, as well as the media and family members of prisoners.

A3N: Of the many news stories featured on the website in the last couple years, could you tell us about a few important stories that you think were the most under-reported and/or misreported by the corporate media?

LA: There are thousands of stories because the true story about prisons is almost completely missing from not only the corporate media, but the left media as well.

First, there is almost no coverage at all about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. The best website for this is Solitary Watch and the RCPP website and blog publishes writing and comix from prisoners in solitary.

Second, there are a number of stories involving prisoners organizing, notably the Georgia Prisoners strike and the hunger strike in Lucasville, Ohio. There are a number of stories posted on the RCPP blog. The Human Rights Coalition (PA) is working to bridge the divide between outside and inside organizing (see The Movement).

Third includes "How prisons and jails are becoming debtors prisons," “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry” by the Brennan Center, and “In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons” by the ACLU .

Finally, the excellent work by The National Advocates for Pregnant Women, whose groundbreaking work brings together issues of women, reproductive rights, criminal justice, and racism.

A3N: Besides the website, how else has the RCPP evolved since the first comic book was published?

LA: The RCPP has evolved greatly since its beginning in 2000. When I started, I barely knew anyone in prison. That began to change once we started conducting our workshops and created a Train the Trainers program which involved many people who had been incarcerated.

Then, the comic books started flying out the door and the daily stacks of letters began arriving. Reading thousands of letters and beginning long-lasting correspondence-relationships with many prisoners, my focus shifted to their efforts to connect and remain a part of the world outside of prison. I saw how the longer someone’s sentence is, the more difficult it becomes to maintain connections—especially after a loved one has passed away.

Because of my daily connections with prisoners, I have become much more involved in conditions of confinement, sentences of life without the possibility of parole, the lengthening of sentences, the parole process or lack of it, and the non-use of compassionate release—even in states where it is policy.

I am constantly aware of the daily cruelties and indignities that men and women endure at the hands of others. I witness how so many people (against circumstances designed to dehumanize and crush their body and mind) manage to overcome and create lives of meaning to themselves and others.

A3N: What do you focus most of your energy on these days?

LA: In addition to sending out comic books, answering mail, and updating the website, I spend some part of everyday attempting to track down research, contacts, and other information for a large number of prisoners who are writers, researchers and activists/organizers.

In Massachusetts, where I am located, I have led an effort to stop the jails from charging fees to prisoners who are convicted and “pre-sentenced.” We are now waiting for a report that will hopefully recommend against these outrageous fees. I am engaged in various efforts to stop “three strikes” legislation from being law in MA. I regularly write and speak to classes and organizations about what is going on all around them, if they will allow themselves to look.

A3N: In your opinion, what are the best forms of practical action that those of us living outside the prison walls can do to help to improve present conditions for those incarcerated, and to challenge the broader criminal “justice” system, with abolition as the long-term goal?

LA: As abolitionists we must find smaller and larger steps along the way to stay engaged and connected to activists inside and out. There’s a lot of work to do:

--Connect to prisoners via books through bars projects and pen pal programs.

--Create true community-based alternatives programs that are not affiliated with sheriff’s departments and other law enforcement, for people with non-violent convictions to stay at home, connected to family and communities, and not go to jail.

--Create bail reform programs so that jails are not debtors prisons- examples include unsecured appearance bonds, setting lower amounts of bail and lowering bail based on the circumstances of someone’s life. For example, do they have children they are taking care of? Do they have a job that will be jeopardized? Many people plead guilty and then end up jail because they know they can’t make bail.

--Create affirmative action campaigns for people with criminal records, based on models of other affirmative action categories, to begin a conversation with employers about the need for second chances. Expand the campaign to housing fairness.

--Talk about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. People will be disbelieving but Solitary Watch is a great resource for information and activism.

--Work to expand parole, rather than restricting it! Attend parole hearings and write letters in behalf of people seeking parole

--Communicate with your governor to reinstate commutation. Most governors no longer commute sentences, although this used to be standard practice. Actively support people seeing commutation through letter writing campaigns and public events.

--Work to end the unnecessary and costly systems designed to send parolees back to prison based on minor violations. Strategically speaking, right now with state budget deficits, is a good time to focus attention on this.

--Challenge the drug laws that criminalize addiction and work with “harm reductionists” to provide needle exchange, safe injection sites, community education.

--Decriminalize sex work by joining forces with organizations of sex workers and make public the harassment from the police suffered by sex workers.

--Work with organizations such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums nationally and in your state to end mandatory minimum drug sentences.

--Begin a conversation with state legislators on the extreme length of sentences, not only for people convicted of non-violent offenses, but for those convicted of violent offenses as well. The new report by the Justice Policy Institute, "Finding Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations,” provides models of what other countries are doing.

--Model the successful organizing strategies and legislation in NY State to end the shackling of women in labor and childbirth.

--Join with family groups and others organizing to end “life without the possibility of parole.” Introduce parole review for everyone beginning at 15 years.

--Make compassionate release real for states where it is already a law. Work with faith-based groups and involve faith-based communities in organizing for compassionate release.

--Work with Families to Amend California's Three Strikes (FACTS) and other organizations to end three strikes and habitual offender sentences.

--Join forces with community-based mental health and addiction treatment centers to advocate for money needed for treatment in communities, rather than jails and prisons filled with people suffering from untreated mental illness and no drug treatment. Drug addiction is a mental illness.

--Question the propaganda about who is criminal and the unchanging nature of people who have committed crimes and how they are portrayed in the media.

--Finally, each of us must fight racism wherever we find it. Fighting racism is a blow to mass incarceration.

A3N: How can our readers support your work?

LA: Your readers can support the work of the RCPP by becoming actively engaged in any areas I suggest in the previous answer. People need to know that they can spend a few hours a week and it can have political meaning.

They can financially support effective grassroots organizations that receive no funding or little funding, including of course, the Real Cost of Prisons Project. Our total yearly budget is approximately $4,000 which provides postage, envelopes and maintaining the website. You can make a donation here.

Mostly, I believe people need to wake-up and get engaged wherever they live in whatever they find most compelling. The fact that there is so much to do is not a reason to do nothing.

--Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture.

http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2011/05/real-cost-of-prisons-interview-with.html

Real Cost of Prisons website
Real Cost of Prisons weblog

Female prisoners and forced prison labor in Arizona (2011)

2011-05-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

From: Prison Abolitionist weblog:

Margaret T. Hance Park
May Day 2011

What immediately follows is an excerpt from one of two letters I received this past week regarding prison labor at Martori Farms, which I read at the May Day Rally today. The second letter is pasted at the bottom.
Note that refusal to accept these jobs is grounds for transfer to a higher security yard or detention unit- is that what we want to be spending our corrections money on, instead of programs and health care for these women?
May Day was awesome, by the way. More on that soon...

Remember Women Prisoners
Pinatafest, Margaret T. Hance Park
May Day 2011

-----------------

4/24/11

Dear Peggy,

Happy Easter :)!!! I hope all was great for you today!!!

Well friend I regret to tell you this letter will not be a social call. I’m calling on you to advocate for me and do what you do. I’m in a TERRIBLE situation here. And I need help from the outside. We are totally being oppressed!!! And ABUSED by the system. The prison is out of control!!!! OK ready?....

It’s a doosey friend. You’re gonna be totally shocked. Perhaps you’ve heard already but we need help! I NEED help before they kill me!!

OK it’s about my job. I work on a work crew for Martori Farms. We work 6 days a week for 8 hrs. It’s a mandatory overtime job. We work in the fields hoeing weeds and thinning plants currently until it’s harvest time then it will be 12 hrs a day. It’s insane. Currently we are forced to work in the blazing sun for 8 hrs. Many times we run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don’t check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! And if we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break we get a MAJOR ticket which takes away our “good time”!!!

We are told we get ‘2’ 15 min breaks and one ½ hr lunch like a normal job but it’s more like 10 min and 20 min. They constantly yell at us we are too slowand to speed up because we are costing $150 an acre in labor and that’s not acceptable.

The place is infested with spiders of all types, scorpions, snakes, and blood suckers. And bees because they harvest them. On my crew alone there are 4 women with bee allergies but they don’t care!! There are NO epinephrine pens on site to SAVE them if stung.

There’s no anti venom available for snake bites and they want us to use windex (yes glass cleaner) for scorpion stings!! INSANITY!!! They are denying us medical care here.

If we are “red lined’ meaning we have a DR or Nurse or Psych appt any other job holds you back because medical takes precedence over every thing. But not at this job. If we don’t go to work and choose to stay for medical we get a Major ticket. And if they’rereally short people or too many people are like screw it give me the ticket like last week they take you to “CDU” the hole!!! It is so not fair!!! COIV xxx is going crazy trying to find people to fill this contract it’s rumored to be a $40 Million contract but also heard $4.5 mill either way it’s big money. They are going to any lengths to fulfill this. Not caring about our civil rights, safety or health!!

Women have made their complaints on inmate letters and verbally to Lt., Sgt, Captains, DW, COIII, COIV, and the major. Their solution was to give us an extra sack lunch and agree to feed us breakfast sat mornings. UGH!! Really… food is not what we were asking for. Though being fed on Saturdays is nice. Yah! They were not feeding us Sats because that’s a day Kitchen opens late because they give brunch on weekends. No lunch so we were getting screwed! But as of this past Sat they said they would feed us before work! Let’s see how long it lasts. Because they also said they would allow us to be “Red lined”. But it only lasted 1 day.

They wake us up between 2:30 and 3:00 am and KICK US OUT if our housing unit by 3:30am then we get fed at 4:00am and our work supervisors show up between 5am and 8am. Then it’s an hour to 1 ½ hr drive to the job site. Then we work 8 hrs regardless of conditions. Even the porta potties are usually dirty. Sometimes NO SOAP and never any seat covers and women on my work crew are HIV+ and Hep C positive. Not sanitary at ALL!

They give us 1 long sleeve shirt to wear for 6 days! 2 pairs of pants, 2 socks, 2 short sleeve shirts, and 2 pairs of used panties, bras, and javascript:void(0)socks!!! YUCK!!! We need help Peggy...

---------------ASPC-Perryville/San Carlos----------

It's come to my attention that the women from ASPC-Perryville who are providing the prison labor to Martori Farms are being coerced into taking the jobs by the guards responsible for recruiting them, and are reportedly working at times without water, sunscreen, adequate nutrition and full breaks, and without regard to medical concerns or age. Those who refuse the jobs or don't work sufficiently hard enough in the fields - or who even just complain - are threatened with being written up (a major ticket which can cost good time), or thrown into the hole.

The women are afraid for their health and safety; some are allergic to the bees they are harvesting, and others have been told to work through serious symptoms such as chest pain, still being dismissed as malingering - reminiscent of what happened to Brenda Todd and Susan Lopez, when they begged for medical care. They're presently working 8-hr days/6 days a week (not including the 1+ hour trek to and from the farm). Come harvest time, they've been told they'll be working 12-hour days.

Upon receiving this information, I called OSHA - the Department of Labor doesn't have jurisdiction over prison labor, even when contracted to private farms. The only department in the state, outside of Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) they referred me to was the AZ Department of Administration's Risk Management people - they're the only ones who care about prisoner-worker "rights", it appears, because they want to minimize liability (which has little to do with taking responsibility in practice, it appears).

The Department of Administration referred me back to the ADC, to a guy by the name of Barry Keith. I told them I already contacted the ADC"s general counsel's office about the issue, and want outside eyes on the prison to assure worker's rights are being protected. They had no one else to refer me to, though, so I left a message for Mr. Keith. We'll see who gets back to me with what - I'm not on the best of terms with them these days.

Again, I'm urging people to contact the Chair of the AZ House Health and Human Services Committee, Rep. Cecil Ash, and request hearings on the conditions in the prisons.
He can be reached at:

Arizona House of Representatives
1700 W. Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007
(cash@azleg.gov)

cc me (see margins), the Phoenix New Times (PO Box 2510, Phoenix, AZ 85002 / Phone: 602-271-0040 / Fax: 602-340-8806) and your own legislators on your concerns, please...let me know if I can print what you write.

Finally, here's some info about prison labor, from a good DAILY KOS story in December 2010. An older Christian Science Monitor article about AZ prison labor as it relates to the issue of immigration comes first...and here's something from another blog post last June: Slaves of the State: Prison Labor

---------------------------------------------

With Fewer Migrant Workers, Farmers Turn to Prison Labor

By Nicole Hill, Christian Science Monitor
Posted on August 22, 2007, Printed on April 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/60497/with_fewer_migrant_workers%2C_farmers_turn_to_prison_labor

Picacho, Ariz. -- Near this dusty town in southeastern Arizona, Manuel Reyna pitches watermelons into the back of a trailer hitched to a tractor. His father was a migrant farm worker, but growing up, Mr. Reyna never saw himself following his father's footsteps. Now, as an inmate at the Picacho Prison Unit here, Reyna works under the blazing desert sun alongside Mexican farmers the way his father did.

"My dad tried to keep me out of trouble," he says, wearing a bandanna to keep the sweat out of his eyes. "But I always got back into the easy money, because it was faster and a lot more money." He's serving a 6-1/2 year sentence for possession and sale of rock cocaine.

As states increasingly crack down on hiring undocumented workers, western farmers are looking at inmates to harvest their fields. Colorado started sending female inmates to harvest onions, corn, and melons this summer. Iowa is considering a similar program. In Arizona, inmates have been working for private agriculture businesses for almost 20 years. But with legislation signed this summer that would fine employers for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, more farmers are turning to the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) for help.

"We are contacted almost daily by different companies needing labor," says Bruce Farely, manager of the business development unit of Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI). ACI is a state labor program that holds contracts with government and private companies. "Maybe it was labor that was undocumented before, and they don't want to take the risk anymore because of possible consequences, so they are looking to inmate labor as a possible alternative."

Reyna and about 20 other low-risk, nonviolent offenders work at LBJ Farm, a family-owned watermelon farm, as part of ADC's mission to employ every inmate, either behind prison walls or in outside companies. The idea is to help inmates develop job skills and save money for their release. "It helps them really pay their debt back to the folks who have been harmed in society, as well as make adequate preparation for their release back onto the streets." says ADC director Dora Schriro.

If it weren't for a steady flow of inmates year-round, says Jack Dixon, owner of LBJ, one of the largest watermelon farms in the western US, he'd have sold out long ago. Even so, last year 400 acres of his watermelons rotted on the ground - a $640,000 loss - because there weren't enough harvesters. Mr. Dixon had applied for 60 H2-A guest worker visas, but only 14 were approved because of previous visa violations.

"We are in desperate need for hand labor," says Dixon, who started working on the farm when he was 9, alongside mostly migrant workers. "It's hard to get migrant workers up here anymore, with all the laws preventing them. It's not what it used to be," Dixon says. "It's dangerous for them with all the coyote wars and smuggling."

Other farmers wonder if inmates could be their solution. Dixon has received calls from a yellow-squash farmer in Texas inquiring about how to set up an inmate labor contract as well as from another watermelon farmer in Colorado seeking advice on how to manage inmate crews.

For labor-rights activists, federal immigration reform is the only viable solution to worker shortages.

Marc Grossman, spokesman for the United Farm Workers of America, says inmate labor undermines what unionized farmworkers have wanted for years: to be paid based on skill and experience. "It's rather insulting that the state [Arizona] would look so poorly on farm workers that they would attempt to use inmates," Grossman says. There is also the food-safety aspect, he says: Experienced workers understand sanitary harvesting.

"Agriculture does not have a reliable workforce, and the answer does not lie with prison labor," says Paul Simonds of the Western Growers Association, a trade association representing California and Arizona. "This just underscores the need for legislation to be passed to provide a legal, stable workforce." A prison lockdown would be disastrous, he points out, with perishable crops awaiting harvest. Other crops, like asparagus and broccoli, require skilled workers.

Although the ADC is considering innovative solutions - including satellite prisons - to fulfill companies' requests for inmate labor, prison officials agree that, in the end, the demand is too high. "To go into a state where agriculture is worth $9.2 billion and expect to meet a workforce need is impossible," says Katie Decker, spokeswoman for ADC. At any given time only about 3,300 prisoners statewide (out of a prison population of about 37,000) are cleared to work outside.

ACI provides inmates to nine private agricultural companies in Arizona, ranging from a hydroponics greenhouse tomato plant to a green chile cannery. Unlike other sectors where federal regulations require that inmate workers be paid a prevailing wage and receive worker compensation, agricultural companies can hire state inmates on a contract basis. They must be paid a minimum of $2 per hour. Thirty percent of their wages go to room and board in prison. The rest goes to court-ordered restitution for victims, any child support, and a mandatory savings account. Private companies are required to pay for transportation from the prison to the worksite and for prison guards.

For Reyna, his work on farms over the past couple of years has added $9,000 in his savings account and given him a renewed respect for his Mexican father's lifetime of stoop labor.

At Dixon's farm, it's 103 degrees F. The inmate crews, wearing orange jumpsuits, work in a rhythmic line, calling out the number of the watermelons, and alongside the trailer. Just a few yards away, Mexican workers also work in a line. The inmates will quit at 4 p.m., while the immigrant laborers may work 13-hour days. "We go back, they stay out here," Reyna says. "It really isn't the same."

In the farm's office, watermelons line the counter, and photos of migrant workers hang in dusty frames. When asked why he doesn't sell the farm, Dixon says, "the inmates, the migrants, these people are part of the family - that's why I keep this darn place."

Dixon says he supports the idea of a reformed, guest-worker program that would employ migrant workers during the harvest and return them to Mexico in the winter. But until that happens, he's willing to fight for the workers he's shared the land with for most of his life.

"People are crossing the border because they are starving to death," Dixon says, "I don't care what their status is. If they are hungry and thirsty, I am going to feed them."

"I could sell this and quit," he continues, "But I believe in supporting the American farming industry."

© 2011 Christian Science Monitor All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/60497/

INSOURCING - Identifying businesses involved in prison labor or supporting those who are

byBob Sloan
DAILY KOS

Tue Dec 14, 2010 at 03:23 PM PST

Many readers have asked how a corporation can be identified as participating in the use of inmate labor. Actually there are three "categories" of those involved in prison labor and prison industry operations:

corporations, businesses and companies that use direct inmate labor for manufacturing and service jobs,

corporations, businesses and companies that contract with other companies to purchase products or services made by inmate labor (such as McDonalds), and,

individuals, corporations, organizations and investment companies that support the use of prison labor or enable prison industry operations by contributing financial support to those directly involved in using inmates for labor or invest in or support private prison corporations.

To demonstrate how difficult involvement in prison industries and the use of inmate labor is to identify, we'll begin with an investment firm involved in many of our 401(k) and retirement accounts.

Fidelity Investments (Fidelity). This "financial investment" corporation is involved in holding the retirement and 401(k) accounts of millions of Americans. Many of the largest companies in our country offer Fidelity Investments as the sole source of retirement investing for their employees.

Fidelity was previously identified as a funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in an earlir Insourcing blog. ALEC is deeply invested in supporting Corrections Corporation of American (CCA) and Geo Group (Geo) - that are both corporate members of ALEC. ALEC has willingly accepted responsibility for enactment of laws authorizing and increasing the use of inmates in manufacturing of products as well as the housing of those inmates by private corporations such as CCA and Geo.

Unfortunately if your retirement savings, 401(K) or other investments are held by Fidelity, chances are some of your money is invested by Fidelity in either the use of prison labor or in other operations related to the prison industrial complex (PIC).

I purposely mentioned McDonald's in the intro because though they are not "directly" using inmate labor in their food service operations, they are dependent upon the use of inmate labor to reduce costs associated with those operations. The way they do this is by contracting to purchase their uniforms and some of the plastic utensils provided to customers from a company using inmate labor to make those uniforms and utensils. The uniforms are made by Oregon Inmates. Wendy's has also been identified as relying upon prison labor to reduce their cost of operations - and they fund ALEC.

Two other U.S. companies relying upon prison labor for products sold in their stores are K-Mart and J.C. Penny. Both sell Jeans made by inmates in Tennessee prisons. The same prison in Tennessee provides labor for Eddie Bauer's wooden rocking horses. There are other products we would not associate with prison made products: dentures, partials, eye glasses, processed foods such as beef, chicken and pork patties sold to and served in our schools, grocery stores and hospitals. I don't know about you but putting dentures made in prison in my mouth just somehow causes me concern...just as buying a box of breaded chicken patties and fixing them for my family does.

What about services such as Insurance? Banking? Utilities - gas, oil, electricity? Prescription drugs? Are all of these services or commodities tied to prison labor and the PIC? Unfortunately, yes. Many insurance companies are tied to ALEC...as are corporations involving utilities provided to you in your city or town. To name jut a few brand names you'll recognize that are invested in prison labor or PIC through ALEC are:

BANKS: American General Financial Group, American Express Company, Bank of America, Community Financial Services Corporation, Credit Card Coalition, Credit Union National Association, Inc., Fidelity Inestments, Harris Trust & Savings Bank, Household International, LaSalle National Bank, J.P. Morgan & Company, Non-Bank Funds Transmitters Group

ENERGY PRODUCERS/OIL: American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Corporation, ARCO, BP America, Inc., Caltex Petroleum, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation, Mobil Oil Corporation, Phillips Petroleum Company.

ENERGY PRODUCERS/UTILITIES: American Electric Power Association, American Gas Association, Center for Energy and Economic Development, Commonwealth Edison Company, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Edison Electric Institute, Independent Power Producers of New York, Koch Industries, Inc., Mid-American Energy Company, Natural Gas Supply Association, PG&E Corporation/PG&E National Energy Group, U.S. Generating Company.

INSURANCE: Alliance of American Insurers, Allstate Insurance Company, American Council of Life Insurance, American Insurance Association, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Corporation, Coalition for Asbestos Justice, (This organization was formed in October 2000 to explore new judicial approaches to asbestos litigation." Its members include ACE-USA, Chubb & Son, CNA service mark companies, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., Kemper Insurance Companies, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, and St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company. Counsel to the coalition is Victor E. Schwartz of the law firm of Crowell & Moring in Washington, D.C., a longtime ALEC ally.)
Fortis Health, GEICO, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Guarantee Trust Life Insurance, MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company, National Association of Independent Insurers, Nationwide Insurance/National Financial, State Farm Insurance Companies, Wausau Insurance Companies, Zurich Insurance.

PHARMACEUTICALS: Abbott Laboratories, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Bayer Corporation, Eli Lilly & Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Inc., Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc., Merck & Company, Inc., Pfizer, Inc., Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America (PhRMA), Pharmacia Corporation, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Inc., Schering-Plough Corporation, Smith, Kline & French, WYETH, a division of American Home Products Corporation.

MANUFACTURING:American Plastics Council, Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, AutoZone, Inc. (aftermarket automotive parts), Cargill, Inc., Caterpillar, Inc., Chlorine Chemistry Council, Deere & Company, Fruit of the Loom, Grocery Manufacturers of America, Inland Steel Industries, Inc., International Game Technology, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Keystone Automotive Industries, Motorola, Inc., Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee Corporation.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS: AT&T, Ameritech, BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., GTE Corporation, MCI, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, SBC Communications, Inc., Sprint, UST Public Affairs, Inc., Verizon Communications, Inc.

TRANSPORTATION: Air Transport Association of America, American Trucking Association, The Boeing Company, United Airlines, United Parcel Service (UPS).

OTHER U.S. COMPANIES: Amway Corporation, Cabot Sedgewick, Cendant Corporation, Corrections Corporation of America, Dresser Industries, Federated Department Stores, International Gold Corporation, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Microsoft Corporation, Newmont Mining Corporation, Quaker Oats, Sears, Roebuck & Company, Service Corporation International, Taxpayers Network, Inc., Turner Construction, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

ORGANIZATIONS/ASSOCIATIONS: Adolph Coors Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, Bell & Howell Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, ELW Foundation, Grocery Manufacturers of America, Heartland Institute of Chicago, The Heritage Foundation, Iowans for Tax Relief, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, National Pork Producers Association, National Rifle Association, Olin Foundation, Roe Foundation, Scaiffe Foundation, Shell Oil Company Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Steel Recycling Institute, Tax Education Support Organization, Texas Educational Foundation, UPS Foundation.

As the foregoing illustrates, many U.S. companies and corporations not only fund ALEC's activities regarding prison labor and PIC, they have foundations that also contribute handsomely to ALEC. Many are represented upon ALEC"s Private Enterprise Board.

Commodities, services and various products sold to U.S. consumers provide profits to these companies/corporations that are used to further the goals of ALEC. They sell us our vehicles, Chrysler, Ford, GM...sell us the fuel to power those vehicles, insurance to cover our cars and trucks. Some of our homes are mortgaged through banks and mortgage companies affiliated with ALEC. Our homes are insured by carriers supporting the use of inmate labor. Our phones are provided by those who are also involved and our medications also fund these same ALEC activities. Even the fast food places we depend upon are part of the overall PIC operation - McDonalds and Wendy's.

Reservations we make for American Airlines and the likes of AVIS rent-a-car are taken by inmates. More and more call centers are coming on line every day manned by inmates in both state and federal prison operations. Each position taken by an inmate, used to belong to private sector workers who are now unemployed.

Another industry I've briefly touched upon needs to be discussed here. That is the agriculture industry. One side effect of immigration laws being enacted in the Western states is the reduction of migrant workers in those states that have passed tougher immigration policies. Not one to miss such an opportunity, prison industries are vying to fill the voids created by these laws.

Colorado has been one of those states hardest hit because of new laws similar to that of SB 1070. In an effort of providing labor to the farmers in that state, the legislature has partnered with the state DOC to implement a new program allowing for the use of inmates on private farms.

"To meet the needs of the capitalist farmers, the state legislature has partnered with the Colorado Department of Corrections to launch a pilot program this month that will contract with more than a dozen large farms to provide prisoners who will work in the fields. More than 100 prisoners will go to farms near Pueblo, Colo., to start the program in the coming weeks.

Prisoners will earn a miserable 60 cents a day. The prisoners will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid handsomely by the farmers. The practice is a modern form of slavery.

The corporate farm owners and capitalist politicians are defending the program. They claim that business needs to be "protected" for the sake of capitalist production in the agricultural sector."

There were many indicators that this was on the horizon over three years ago, when articles began to appear about several states switching from migrant farm workers to inmates:

"As states increasingly crack down on hiring undocumented workers, western farmers are looking at inmates to harvest their fields. Colorado started sending female inmates to harvest onions, corn, and melons this summer. Iowa is considering a similar program. In Arizona, inmates have been working for private agriculture businesses for almost 20 years. But with legislation signed this summer that would fine employers for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, more farmers are turning to the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) for help."

It isn't surprising that agricultural and farming needs would be pointed in this direction by state legislators...where ALEC's efforts of eliminating "illegal" aliens from agribusiness work coincided with their SB 1070 and earlier state legislative efforts. They realized the impact the laws would have upon immigrant workers and that a labor force would be necessary to take the place of immigrants picked up or scared off by laws like SB 1070. CCA, Geo and state prison industry operators were informed of the expected future labor needs of U.S. farmers and began to gear up in 2007 when ALEC successfully proposed and was able to enact one of the first restrictive immigration laws in Colorado. I believe ALEC projected the impact on farming, predicted the labor need and advised prison industries to be prepared to put inmates out in agriculture work on short notice. As soon as the Colorado law went into effect, prison industries had inmates picked, vetted and with the proper custody level ready to step into the shoes of the missing migrant workers.

All in all a very effective business plan put into place by ALEC and their members - eliminate an entire industry workforce and replace it with a workforce supplied by their members at a wage scale of less than $1.00 per hour. At the same time salaries of the prison staff guarding the workers is paid for by the farmers. Talk about a win-win-win business plan.

Prison labor had been used in Arizona for more than two decades prior to SB 1070. However the enactment of that law made the need for inmate labor to treble - along with profits from that labor.

Other occupations are being impacted by privatization of prison related healthcare. Many doctors are now choosing to work in prison rather than private practice. Obviously this switch lowers the number of doctors available in the private sector. One reason for this change in direction by physicians is retirement benefits and free malpractice insurance offered by prison healthcare corporations, such as PHS.

If more information is needed to clarify the financial impact of continuing incarceration upon us as a society take a brief look at Washington State's latest efforts to address the state deficit. The below cuts are necessary to reduce the budget by $600 million. A substantial need for such reductions was created because of the state's continued reliance upon incarcerating more and more citizens, reducing private sector jobs through the use of prison labor by large WA. corporations such as Boeing and Microsoft.

"Among the cuts approved by legislators: nearly $50 million from the Department of Corrections, including the closure of a prison facility; $50 million from K-12 education, including funding intended to keep class sizes small; $51 million from higher education, including at several of the state's flagship universities; nearly $30 million from a state-subsidized health insurance program for the poor; and the elimination of non-emergency dental care for poor adults."

What a trade off, huh? More cuts to education and social programs that benefit the poor while they pay out millions to prison industries and private prison operators - and give tax breaks to Boeing and Microsoft. Washington citizens are getting the shaft - especially their students and the poorest among them.

While Washington state is making terrible cuts to the budget, elsewhere prison workers and their supporters are successfully keeping unnecessary prisons open to keep prison staffers from losing their employment. An action that keeps taxpayers funding their salaries - needlessly.

"ETOWAH COUNTY, Alabama -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have agreed Thursday to delay removal of more than 300 inmates from Etowah County's detention center until at least the spring, the Gadsden Times reports.

ICE officials had notified the county Saturday that they would be removing the inmates from the Etowah County jail, which is the only facility in Alabama with a contract to house ICE inmates.

On Thursday, after intercession by the county's congressional delegation, ICE agreed to keep inmates at the facility and use Etowah County's prisoner transportation services until March 31, 2011, according to the Gadsden Times, which cites a news release from Sheriff Todd Entrekin.

The decision stops what would have been a substantial economic loss for the jail and could have resulted in the loss of some 49 jobs."

While this fight to keep jobs and inmates in AL. is fought, another fight results in the loss of a successful privately operated reentry program for ex-offenders in Virginia. The state has decided to "re-vamp" its reentry efforts and closed this and 12 other successful programs. Even in instances where volunteers and organizers step-up to address recidivism, the state steps-in and thwarts their efforts. It's almost like there are efforts going on at the state levels to keep incarceration and recidivism rates up.

Our country is being turned into a nation of prisoners and those who pay for their incarceration costs - period. Everything else is being cut to keep the PIC in place and profitable. Medicare and Social Security are next in line in the next U.S. Congress. Don't you find it odd that of all the rhetoric about our failing economy, the cuts to social and community programs, unemployment and unemployment compensation arguments - none of our lawmakers are openly voicing calls for any reduction in imprisonment? I mean there have been hundreds of articles identifying incarceration costs as being responsible for necessary cuts in funding for education and other necessary programs...but no one wants to go on the record as supporting a stop to mass incarcerations? How is it that our elected officials continue to cut more and more out of annual budgets to pay for incarceration and make no effort of reducing the need for that incarceration? I believe it is because they're paid handsomely to avoid any effort of reforming laws or reducing incarceration. It is simply too profitable to allow us to stop sending men, women and our children to jail and prisons.

This is exemplified by a recent article on Louisiana's practice of housing state prisoners in local Parish jails:

“Legislators wonder why the budget for the Department of Corrections is so large,” said one state employee who is familiar with the department. “As long as they keep trying to criminalize everything they find personally offensive in the name of law and order for the benefit of the folks back home, the budget is going to keep growing.

”Each legislative session, dozens of bills are introduced by Louisiana lawmakers to either create new criminal statutes or to increase penalties for existing laws. Only rarely does a bill attempt to reduce penalties for crimes. In the 2010 regular session alone, for example, 68 of 93 bills addressing criminal procedure and crime, called for jail time for new crimes or longer sentences for existing laws. Those included crimes ranging from “unlawfully wearing clothing which exposes undergarments or certain body parts” to cyberbullying, and terrorist acts.

"Local sheriffs relish the opportunity to house state prison inmates because it infuses needed cash into the local coffers. One state official said the actual cost to sheriffs to house the state prisoners is only a fraction of the $24.39 daily income per prisoner. “It’s a big bonus for the sheriffs,” he said."

Right now prisoners in Georgia are striking due to being used as slave labor by that state's prison industries. Such strikes are unheard of and one reason is the huge amount of "get-back" available to the prison staff and their willingness to use physical means to force compliance. My heart goes out to these men, as I've been there and know how dire their circumstances must be to cause such a dangerous mission from behind bars. Many are trying to provide assistance to them through phone and email communications with prison authorities, but so far the prisons involved (6) remain on indefinite lockdowns with reports of retaliation at each facility being reported via cell phone calls from the inmates. There has been limited media coverage of this historical strike (and no mainstream media attention) - again, it is not in their best interests to publicize this action to the public, for fear of creating a discussion on the merits of using inmate labor in a "slavery like" manner - though from reports, thousands of inmates are participating in the strike. These men represent those who are now performing the work previously performed by Georgia private sector workers, and doing it for pennies on the dollar.

As shown by the above information, every facet of our lives are now touched in some way by prison privatization, prison healthcare, feeding of prisoners or by working prisoners in the PIC. This puts their products in our homes, on our grocer shelves, in our produce consumption and reduces available private sector jobs - including positions for physicians. Sadly we must realize that all of this is financed with our tax dollars that are quickly converted to "profits" once received into the coffers of corporations participating in the PIC.

Many comments have been made to my Insourcing Series saying we should identify those involved and boycott their products and services. As this segment demonstrates, it is nearly impossible to identify each corporation, group, organization or individuals involved in PIC and prison industries. Their products are so vast and diverse, each of our homes now have one or more of those products in use. Even picking up the phone and calling for technical assistance with products, making a reservation or inquiring about services may put us in touch with an inmate on the other end of the phone. The Prison Industrial Complex is simply too vast to avoid or boycott - in a manner typically used by consumers and concerned citizens.

Boycotting is usually an activity used to refuse our business to those involved in practices we object to. In this case it is just too difficult to accurately identify prison industry participants.

I'm working on developing a program now that may allow all of us to identify those companies, businesses and corporations not involved in any way with prison labor or the PIC. We can eliminate the profits realized by corporations using inmate labor, by reducing sales of their products. Just as those participating in the PIC transfer our tax dollars into profits, we can transfer their anticipated future profits back to the private sector worker through participation in this program. The only thing these corporations understand is "profit". Money drives them and is what gets their attention. So let's get their attention by denying them sales - not boycotting.

I intend to set up a website allowing those not connected with the PIC, not investing in or funding prison industries and not selling any products made by inmates or inmate provided services to be named. The site is intended to list corporations, retailers, providers and businesses certified as not involved in PIC operations. Links to these certified non-participating company websites and online catalogs, local outlets and products lines will be made available. In addition those industries, corporations, investors, banks, finance companies and others identified as profiting from PIC or prison industries in any form will be identified and "blacklisted". In this way one comprehensive site can be used to identify those products, services and companies to avoid while providing links to U.S. retailers and companies not involved, that provide the same products or services without the use of prisoners.

In order to participate, these companies must "Certify" in writing that they use no inmate labor, do not invest in or sell products made in prison. Secondly they will be required to use the "Made in U.S.A." labels with products and services provided by American workers and offer those products to U.S. consumers.

Prison made goods include those made in China and elsewhere that are finding their way to our retail shelves more and more of late. There are strict prohibitions against allowing imported products into the U.S. when those products were made by prison, slave or child labor. These strict provisions are being circumvented in some instances and deliberately ignored by our Custom Service in others. Companies, businesses, retailers and manufacturers wishing to be listed within the proposed site, must certify non-use of those foreign prison-made goods as well.

The site is intended to allow consumers to identify those not involved in prison labor related products and offer shoppers a discount direct from participating U.S. manufacturers, retailers and service providers for purchasing their products or services made by U.S. workers in our private sector markets. This will help increase jobs and deny continued profits to those using inmate labor.

This effort will be time consuming and expensive to develop and put into operation. Sponsors and volunteers will be needed to assist in this endeavor. This is going to need the expertise of a website developer, software programmers, advertising and accounting assistance. We are going to need people to submit to us the names of businesses they own, work for or invest in that are not associated or affiliated with prison labor or products. Money is going to be needed to advertise the site and make consumers aware that such a site exists to provide them with alternatives to prison made products. If successful this will put money into the pockets of those manufacturers and retailers who refuse to become involved in prison made goods for profit. It will provide those businesses with income to hire more workers due to increased production and sales.

Any volunteers...suggestions...advice...assistance? If you believe this is a good idea to help us take back our jobs, eliminate the vast profits made off of cheap prison labor and promote "real" products made by free American workers, write and let me know. If you want to participate or assist in this development, I'm listening...

Originally posted to Bob Sloan on Tue Dec 14, 2010 at 03:23 PM PST.

LIFER LESSONS: Marshall Eddie Conway talks about prison life

2011-04-29T03:28:00.000-07:00

Read the story with links here: http://citypaper.com/news/lifer-lessons-1.1137776

By Van Smith

Published: April 27, 2011

Now 65 years old, Marshall “Eddie” Conway started serving a life sentence for murdering Baltimore police officer Donald Sager when he was 24. Back then, Conway was a postal worker and U.S. Army veteran. He was also a civil rights activist who, as a member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, had helped organize efforts to better working conditions for African-Americans at a number of major employers in the Baltimore area. His most renowned role, though, was as Minister of Defense in the Maryland chapter of the Black Panther Party—a position that put him on the front lines of a successful government effort to undermine the party.

Now, Conway is a published author with two books to his credit. In 2009, iAWME Publications issued Conway’s The Greatest Threat: The Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO, in part as a fundraiser for Conway’s legal defense. And earlier this month, AK Press published Conway’s memoir, Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, a release party for which takes place April 29 at 2640 Space featuring readings from the book by Bashi Rose and WombWorks Productions, Pam Africa talking about the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, and a performance by Lafayette Gilchrist. (Visit redemmas.org/2640 for more details.)

The new memoir provides an ideal opportunity to consider the man and his life from different perspectives. Edward Ericson Jr. takes a serious look at Conway’s claims to be a political prisoner in his essay about The Greatest Threat. Michael Corbin, who taught at the Metropolitan Transition Center, the former Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore, places Marshall Law in the American tradition of prison literature. And since decades in prison have tempered Conway’s revolutionary zeal, in a recent phone interview from the Jessup Correctional Institution, he spoke of what hurts and helps the corrective function of prisons, the challenges of fatherhood on the inside, the folly of drug dealing, his own unrealized aspirations in life, and what he would do as a free man.

City Paper: Maryland has a life-means-life policy, essentially denying the possibility for parole for those serving life sentences. It was put in place in 1995 by then governor Parris Glendening, who recently admitted his regrets.

Marshall “Eddie” Conway: Yes, I’m aware of his regrets, 16 years later and after about 50 of my associates are dead. During the course of waiting for this policy to be changed, they passed away.

CP: In your mind, what is wrong with this policy?

MEC: The real problem is that young people coming into the prison system see people that have been participating in the programs, doing all they can to turn their lives around and become usual citizens in the community, and they see how they’ve spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years doing that, with no kind of possibility of release. Well, right away, young guys end up saying, “Well, what’s the point?” It increases the potential for violence, because there is frustration, and it increases hopelessness, which means that people tend to act out. It doesn’t give an incentive for people to rehabilitate themselves, and instead creates negative activity and energy. If you take away hope in a system like this, then you’re going to receive a lot of people returning back to the community very frustrated and hopeless—which is not good, considering the unemployment situation. Also, when a person reaches a certain age, just the fact that a person is, like, 45, 50, or over, means that he becomes a safer risk for release in the community. And most of the time, when you get people that have done an extensive amount of time in prison, they got an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree, so they are more capable of taking care of themselves.

CP: Since the policy has been in place, have you seen an increase in violence, hopelessness, and nihilistic approaches to serving time?

MEC: There was a real spike in violence immediately after that policy was announced. In this institution, for maybe a 10-year period after 1995, pretty much every week there was something fatal or near-fatal occurring. I’m not saying that’s a direct result of Glendening’s policy, but it got so bad that the guards actually refused to come to work. And that violence spread from this institution to others.

CP: If the policy is overturned, would prisons become more suited for rehabilitation?

MEC: Well, of course it would. There are a lot of older prisoners, like myself, working to decrease the level of violence and conflict, and that’s really having a good impact. But in terms of people turning their lives around and having hope and having a desire to motivate change—if you can’t show them something at the end, there’s no incentive for that, and I’m kind of like swimming against the tide. But if they see a way to get out of this predicament—if they work, if they develop, if they grow and change their paradigm—that’s going to probably change the climate within the prison population.

CP: Do you suspect you would have been paroled if this policy hadn’t been in place?

MEC: I don’t know if I would have been paroled, but I have to assume that I would have. I was a model prisoner, quote unquote, meaning that I was—and I am—working to improve the conditions among the prisoners.

CP: Let’s pretend you hadn’t been convicted. What would have been your career?

MEC: I want to believe that, if the community hadn’t been drugged and the jobs hadn’t been shipped overseas, we could have turned this around, and I would have probably ended up teaching somewhere. I had two interests. One was history and education, and the other was the medical profession. I had an aspiration to go into school at Johns Hopkins University, trying to engage in further training for the medical profession. I don’t know that that would have happened, but the teaching probably would have. Either way, I would have been constantly engaging in the community, trying to better the conditions.

CP: What do your sons do?

MEC: I have two sons. One of my sons is an instructor at Bowling Green University in Ohio, teaching computer science. The other is a manager of a water-purification plant in Maryland.

CP: How did you manage as a father in prison?

MEC: Right at the beginning, I have to admit that I succeeded in the case of one and I failed in the case of the other. In the case of my second son, I was estranged from him all the way until he was 18. It was my fault that that was the case, and I certainly never was a father to him. We tried to recover and establish some sort of relationship, and it just didn’t seem to work out. My oldest son, who I knew from the time he was born, I kept in touch with his mother, but I kind of lost track of him through my early years in the prison system simply because, of my initial seven years, I spent six of them in solitary confinement. Somewhere along the line, his mother came to me and just pretty much said, “Look, you need to talk to your son.” So at that time I had organized a 10-week counseling program for young people, and I actually had my son brought to the program. I would sit down and talk to him, one on one, and we would counsel in larger groups. We developed and we started bonding. Like all young black men at the time, he was like, “I’m going to the NBA, going to be a baller.” He was really good, but only so many people get selected to go into the NBA, and he needed to be considering a profession. So he decided to go to college and do the computer-science thing. I’ve supported him as much as I could, and I tried to get him to get his doctorate, but he had had enough of that. I think it was a good experience for both of us.

CP: How do you see it going with other inmates, and their issues with fatherhood?

MEC: It’s one of the things that we deal with a lot. I’ve been working with young guys for the whole entire 40 years, but at some point I had to stop for a while. They were just so angry, and the morals and values had changed to such a degree that I couldn’t be a neutral observer when somebody is talking about beating up their grandmother or disrespecting their mother. But after I started back working with them, I noticed this great hostility to fathers, this great anger at being abandoned.

But the other side of that is that they really want to be very connected and attached to their children, even though they’re locked up. They’re trying to break that cycle, even though the cycle continues due to the simple fact that they are here. They’re trying to be the father that they didn’t have. So that’s good, and it’s more young people like that than not, and a lot of them actually do end up going back out, and they realize that they almost blew that opportunity to be that father. So they tend to get jobs and do what they need to do to stay there because of that.

But, I’m in here now with three generations of people. I’m looking across the generations of absent fathers. And I don’t know how that cycle gets broken if there’s no jobs. One of the great negatives is that maybe 80 percent of people in the prisons around the country are there for drug-related activity, not necessarily violent. Just selling drugs, buying drugs, using drugs, or fighting over drugs, based on the fact that there’s no jobs out there.

CP: It strikes me that these low-level drug dealing jobs are just bad jobs. Low pay, long hours, harsh management.

MEC: You think? And there’s not very good health care!

CP: People tend to think drug dealers get into it because it’s an easy buck.

MEC: It’s not an easy buck. It’s day-to-day survival—and it’s detrimental to your survival. If you manage to make any money, the state comes and scoops up any you might have around, and what you may have stashed away is used for the lawyers. So you end up with nothing.

CP: I wonder, are there any drug dealers out there for whom it doesn’t end badly? The odds are probably better that you’d make it to the NBA.

MEC: This is the bottom line: The nature of drug trafficking itself means that you are going to be highly publicized, that people are going to know who you are, that there’s always going to be a chain of evidence back to you, and that there’s always going to be someone who’s going to want to avoid being incarcerated by saying, “Go look at him or her.” It’s definitely a loser’s proposition.

CP: What do you know about gangs in Maryland prisons?

MEC: The real problem is that anybody in prison that associates with street organizations is pretty much tagged or targeted, be it the Black Guerilla Family, Crips, Bloods, Dead Man Incorporated, or any of them. It has made it impossible to interact in any kind of a positive way with members of those organizations without being tagged. I was educating people, and on the days that I made myself available, I would be in the yard and anybody could approach me to talk about things like how to make parole, how to deal with domestic situations. The result was the prison authorities tagged me. When I talked to the lieutenant about it, I said, “These are the same guys that are going back into our communities, and if they go back in with negative attitudes they are going to be destructive, they’re going to hurt people—your family, my family, everybody else’s families—and I’m not going to ignore that, so I’m going to work with them.”

But you can’t get too close without being labeled, without it being reported that you’re associating with them. So I don’t even go into the yard anymore, but I still work with organizations that provide information, education, insight, and skills to manage conflicts. You get penalized if you try to work with these groups any closer than that. It’s almost as if the prison authorities want them to proliferate, so they can have “X” amount of members or associates documented and get funds for, quote unquote, anti-gang activities. I don’t know what the end is, other than everybody at some point will end up in Big Brother’s files.

CP: What would you do if you were released tomorrow?

MEC: With the rest of my life, I would try to get a house with a nice garden and grow some food and smell the roses. I would still be involved in developing good, positive communities, but I’m a big supporter now of organic food, growing your own food, developing your way to sustain yourself into the future. So I would want to do that and encourage other people to do it.

Published in the Baltimore City Paper

State budget crises push sentencing reforms

2011-04-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press
April 2nd 2011

ATLANTA (AP) -- As costs to house state inmates have soared in recent years, many conservatives are reconsidering a tough-on-crime era that has led to stiffer sentences, overcrowded prisons and bloated corrections budgets.

Ongoing budget deficits and steep drops in tax revenue in most states are forcing the issue, with law-and-order Republican governors and state legislators beginning to overhaul years of policies that were designed to lock up more criminals and put them away for longer periods of time.

"There has been a dramatic shift in the political landscape on this issue in the last few years," said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States. "Conservatives have led the charge for more prisons and tougher sentencing, but now they realize they need to be just as tough on criminal justice spending."

Read the rest here.

Congressional Briefing on Solitary Confinement to Take Place This Week

2011-04-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

APRIL 4, 2011
by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella
From: SolitaryWatch

For the first time, members of Congress will sponsor a Capitol Hill briefing on the use and abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prison and jails. Sponsors include John Conyers, Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, and panelists include several people we've written about before on Solitary Watch, including Robert King, Laura Rovner, and David Fathi. What follows is information from the flyer on the briefing.

Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI), Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA) and Cedric Richmond (D-LA)

Invite you to attend a briefing and documentary screening on:

The Abuses of Solitary Confinement in the U.S. Criminal Justice System
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - Room 2226 Rayburn HOB

3:30 PM - Briefing

Each day tens of thousands of prisoners in the U.S. are held in solitary confinement. Usually in isolation for at least 23 hours a day and denied human contact, these inmates are subject to a range of other restrictive conditions. This briefing will examine the detrimental impacts of the abusive use or over-use of solitary confinement, including its disproportionate impact on inmates of color, the appropriateness of its use on mentally ill inmates, and other concerns about its use by correctional facilities.

Welcome by Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Robert C. " Bobby" Scott (D-VA)

. Michael Randle, Program Manager for the Judge Nancy R. McDonnell Community Based Correctional Facility

. Robert King, Only Freed Member of the Angola 3, Released in 2001 after 29 years in Solitary Confinement in Angola Prison in Louisiana

. David Fathi, Director, American Civil Liberties Union, National Prison Project

. Laura L. Rovner, Associate Professor of Law, Civil Rights Clinic, University of Denver College of Law

. Tory Pegram, Campaign Coordinator, International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 (Moderator)

4:30 PM - Documentary Screening

"In the Land of the Free."- Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, this documentary examines the story of three extraordinary men known as the "Angola 3"-Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King-who together have spent more than a century in solitary confinement in Louisiana. Two of the men are still held in solitary after a record 39 years.

There will be a discussion with Robert King, and Carine Williams, Angola 3 attorney for both civil and criminal cases following screening.

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) will participate in the documentary screening.

http://solitarywatch.com/2011/04/04/congressional-briefing-on-solitary-confinement-to-take-place-this-week/

Cruel and usual: US solitary confinement - Features - Al Jazeera English

2011-03-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

Cruel and usual: US solitary confinement - Features - Al Jazeera English

As incarceration rates explode in the US, thousands are placed in solitary confinement, often without cause.

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella
Last Modified: 19 Mar 2011

The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture.

In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in "the hole".

A few of them are prison murderers or rapists who present a threat to others. Far more have committed minor disciplinary infractions within prison or otherwise run afoul of corrections staff. Many of them suffer from mental illness, and are isolated for want of needed treatment; others are children, segregated for their own "protection"; a growing number are elderly and have spent half their lives or more in utter solitude.

No one knows for sure what their true numbers are. Many states, as well as the federal government, flatly declare that solitary confinement does not exist in their prison systems. As for their euphemistically named "Secure Housing Units" or "Special Management Units", most states do not report occupancy data, nor do wardens report on the inmates sent to "administrative segregation".

Prosecutor, judge and jury

By common estimate, more than 20,000 inmates are held in supermax prisons, which by definition isolate their prisoners. Perhaps 50,000 to 80,000 more are in solitary confinement on any given day in other prisons and local jails, many of them within sight of communities where Americans go about their everyday lives.

Read more here.

Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement Arises!

2011-03-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

From an email:
http://unprison.wordpress.com/

Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement Arises!
Posted on March 21, 2011 by Bruce Reilly

Alabama represents the answer to a clarion call. This is a call that
speaks to us in our own voice; clear, loud and urgent. A voice that
speaks to our identity and emanates from the soul, ringing true both
in the head and the heart. Our objective is a collective one,
continuing in that vein, as we gathered fifty people from across the
nation to engage in a conversation about the need to build a Formerly
Incarcerated and Convicted People’s Movement. We understand and
declare very clearly: the criminal justice system does NOT work. It
is no more than a destructive force in our communities now and for
future generations.

Fifty formerly incarcerated and convicted organizers came with a
dedication and commitment stating that this was our time. We were not
deterred by our inability to raise the entire budget to fly, feed and
house people in Alabama for three days, nor were the few dozen
supporters who found their own means to be present for this historic
moment. As activists, we have been to our share of conferences and
rallies, yet before many of us left our homes, we knew this invitation
was different. And we readily subsidized our own fight for
restoration of our own civil and human rights.

The first exercise was to introduce ourselves to each other not simply
by our names or the many great struggles that we were currently
engaged in, but by who we embraced as our heroes. We wrote our names
and the name of our hero on a piece of paper and we taped those to the
front of the table where we sat. We were quickly able to see the
right people were in the room. We participated in designing a
historical time line and this practice drew us closer to discovering
our common history, something uniquely ours as incarcerated, formerly
incarcerated and convicted people. Knowing where we came from made it
easier to find our vision. We agreed to accept as our vision “The
Fight for the Full Restoration of Our Civil and Human Rights.”

The concept and construction of a movement requires a vessel large
enough to hold us all, and steering a vessel of this scale requires a
crew of many navigators and leaders. Agreeing on a vision was an
essential and amazing accomplishment in light of the fact that time
was short, and with so many leaders in the room egos could easily have
gotten in the way. We agreed to maintain the structure that propelled
us to this point. However, we needed to enlarge the steering
committee to seriously consider setting a national agenda. Twenty
people volunteered to join the steering committee, providing us
greater diversity in both geography and gender. We decided we would
do regular conference calls to move forward with the agenda and
coordinating the Los Angeles convening.

The Steering Committee planned to kick off the beginning of this
Movement by walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma. Days
before any of us hopped in a plane, bus, train, or car, we were
informed that we would have stay on the sidewalk if we were going to
march across the bridge. Over 247 people called the mayor of Selma
and let him know we were coming to march over the bridge, and not on
the sidewalk. Some of us consciously considered going to jail again,
and some of us even emptied our bank accounts just in case we needed
bail. We didn’t anticipate Mayor George Evans of Selma would ask to
speak with us after our march, or agree to read our statement at the
46-year Jubilee marking Bloody Sunday. Nor did we anticipate that our
march across the bridge would be headlines on one of the largest
papers in Alabama, with over twenty photos online. Our own Tina
Reynolds was photographed carrying a sign proclaiming that “Democracy
Starts At Home.” We should be allowed to vote and exercise our civil
rights regardless of where we live in the United States.

Our visit to the state capital in Montgomery is a testament to the
power of unity. While standing on the stairs of the Capital building
we were introduced to, and had a short conversation with, Alabama
Chief Justice Sue Cobb-Bell. The Chief Justice explained the serious
effort underway to rewrite the criminal code and reduce the prison
population by 3,000. Once inside, we were led into a conference room
where we met Rep. John Rogers, the head of the Alabama Black Caucus.
After a spirited discussion about pressing issues, we were ultimately
promised a community forum of which we would take part in choosing the
community organizations to participate. We were also promised that
key elected officials, including the governor, would be present at the
forum.

We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the work and support that
our host organization, The Ordinary People Society (TOPS), put into
our initial organizing. On a side note: TOPS was seriously respected
by prominent members of the Alabama legislature, who pledged their
support to this struggle, and prominent officials in both Selma and
Montgomery. Meanwhile, our Allies were honing their own efforts, such
as supporting those organizations on our side (and inspiring those who
should be), and creating more spaces for our voices to be heard. They
are committed to recognizing our priorities and helping us create the
tools for our organizing efforts.

Last but not least, we want to thank everyone who attended and wrapped
their heads around the bigger picture of Movement and a larger
agenda. As a collective we all committed to something bigger than
each of our own organizations or individual work. We took action and
decided to organize through Regions represented by our expanded
Steering Committee. Regional caucuses will facilitate closer
collaboration in our areas, and we will build a movement on one
accord, as a collective committed to “The Fight for Full Restoration
of our Civil and Human Rights”. Let us keep moving forward, and share
this document with people we believe should know and participate in
our common efforts to build a Movement. Let people know about the
goal to meet in Los Angeles- November 2nd, 2011.

We have recognized these dates/weeks for actions, meetings, and
solidarity. We call on our members to take part in order to raise our
capacity, profile, and build a Movement:
March 29th
April 23rd
May 21st (Riverside Church), May 28th (Solidarity w/ Georgia Prison
Strike)
June 17th (40th Anniversary of Drug War)
Aug. 21st (40th Anniversary of San Quentin Uprising)
Sept. 29th (40th Anniversary of Attica Rebellion).

On June 23rd-26th is the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. There is
an entire track of workshops focused on the Prison Industrial Complex,
and members of the FICPM will be participating. This is an excellent
opportunity for those who can attend.

Sincerely,
Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement Steering Committee

Guantánamo in America (Part One): NPR Explains How Muslims Are Deprived of Fundamental Rights in Secretive Prison Units

2011-03-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

From: Andy Worthington´s Guantanamo Bay Webarchive:

20 March 2011

It has long been a regret of mine that I don’t have enough time to write about the domestic prison system in the US, because of the distressing scale of incarceration in the US (the highest per capita rate in the world, by far) and also because of the violence and brutality, and the use of prolonged isolation, that mirrors much of what has been taking place at Guantánamo and elsewhere in the “War on Terror” for the last nine years.

Fortunately, two weeks ago NPR ran a major feature on a disturbing aspect of the isolation regime in domestic US prisons, focusing on the little-known Communications Management Units (CMUs), located in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Marion, Illinois, where the inmates are mostly Muslims, who are subjected to surveillance 24 hours a day, have their mail monitored, and are prevented from having any physical contact whatsoever with their families during prison visits –behavior that is more reminiscent of Guantánamo than of the rest of the domestic prison system.

Although Muslims make up the majority of the prisoners in the CMUs, there appears to be little internal logic regarding who is held and why, as those held range from foreign nationals involved in major acts of international terrorism to American citizens involved in fundraising for organzations acting as alleged fronts for terrorism and others caught in US government sting operations, which rather tends to enforce the notion that a large part of the CMUs’ rationale involves racial and religious profiling.

The prisoners also include — or have included — individuals involved in various forms of political activism, including environmental activism, and others for whom the rationale for keeping them under 24-hour surveillance appears to be that they “have spoken out at other prison units and advocated for their rights” and/or “have taken leadership positions in religious communities in those other prisons,” and/or because “officials worry that they could recruit other inmates for terrorism or direct people in the outside world to commit crimes.”

If you didn’t come across the NPR feature, I’ve cross-posted below the main article, “Guantánamo North”: Inside Secretive U.S. Prisons, but I also recommend a shorter follow-up article, Leaving “Guantanamo North”, and two other parts of the NPR feature that are not reproduced here: TIMELINE: The History Of ‘Guantanamo North’ and, in particular, DATA & GRAPHICS: Population Inside The CMUs, which contains the names and details of the 86 prisoners (and ex-prisoners) identified in the NPR report.

“Guantánamo North”: Inside Secretive U.S. Prisons
By Carrie Johnson and Margot Williams, NPR, March 3, 2011

Reports about what life is like inside the military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay are not uncommon. But very little is reported about two secretive units for convicted terrorists and other inmates who get 24-hour surveillance, right here in the U.S.

Read the rest here....

Deaths in Iranian prison must be investigated

2011-03-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

From: Amnesty International

17 March 2011

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into reports that up to 14 people were killed in a disturbance in a jail near Tehran this week.

The incident at the overcrowded Qezel Hesar prison in Karaj occurred on Tuesday night when clashes broke out involving prisoners and prison guards. The Prisons Chief said that a judicial investigation has been launched.

"Such a high death toll is extremely worrying. Prison officials have a responsibility to maintain order and to protect the lives of prisoners, but must exercise restraint," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

"A prompt inquiry into these deaths is essential but it must be independent and transparent, as international human rights standards require, such as those set out in the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the Body of Principles for the protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.

"Unfortunately the Iranian Judiciary has routinely failed to carry out such investigations, so we are once again calling on the international community to use the current session of the UN Human Rights Council to create a Special Rapporteur to monitor and report on human rights in the Iran.”

Prison authorities said the riot was sparked by death row prisoners and drug-trafficking and possession offenders committing arson and other destructive acts in an attempt to escape, as well as attacking prison guards.

However, human rights activist groups told Amnesty International the prisoners were protesting at poor conditions and attempts to transfer some of the inmates for execution.

One activist based abroad said he had been in contact with a prisoner from inside Section 2 of prison until the early hours of Wednesday, when the phone lines were cut.

“The prisoners took over Sections 2 and 3 of the prison,” the activist told Amnesty International.

"I was told that armed guards had stationed themselves on the roof of the prison and outside the doors to the section and the prisoners set fire to bedding to try to stop the guards from entering. The prisoner told me that the guards were shooting at everyone.”

There are reports that at least six people died from gunshot wounds and over 100 may have been injured, with some dying in - or on the way to - medical centres.

Iranian State Television reportedly said on Wednesday that 14 people had died, including at least nine prisoners, and 33 had been injured. Prison guards may have also been among the fatalities.

"We know that the Iranian authorities are on a killing spree at the moment, having executed well over 100 people – mainly alleged drugs offenders - since the start of the year. This is yet one more reason why they should immediately order a moratorium on all executions," added Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

Women-Prisoners to Embark on Hunger Strike in the Country of Georgia

2011-03-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

Turkish Weekly and Georgia Times, March 10, 2011

Human rights defender Eka Beselia informed the media that the Georgian women-prisoners are going to embark on hunger strike because of unbearable conditions in prisons, - GHN reports.

Eka Beselia underlined that women-prisoners demand attention to their problems. "They often sleep right on the cold floor. They cannot practice proper hygiene; they are kept under inhuman conditions", - Beselia says.

Beselia remarked that the penitentiary system is practically unavailable for monitoring.

The human rights defender says that it is not only women-prisoners who are kept in tough conditions. There have been recorded many facts of torture. For instance, an invalid with a second degree of disablement has been recently beaten for trying to protect his rights.

Human right defenders complain that the state does not respond to the violation of the prisoners' rights.

Group of formerly incarcerated people visit area, discuss prison reform

2011-03-06T01:33:00.000-08:00

By Scott Johnson • March 3, 2011
Montgomery Advertiser:

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20110303/NEWS01/103030314/Group-of-formerly-incarcerated-people-visit-area-discuss-prison-reform

They have turned around their own lives, and now they want to turn around the direction of the U.S. prison system.

That is part of the message being presented by a group of formerly incarcerated people from across the country that employs the slogan "serving our country after serving our time."

Dubbed the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People Movement, the group met Monday through Wednesday in Montgomery and Selma.

It is the first time the group has gathered in one location, and the choice of Montgomery and Selma was no accident.

"It is like our path was cut in the civil rights movement, and we are just bringing it back where it started," said Dorsey Nunn, a rights advocate and former inmate from San Francisco who helped organize the meeting.

The group met Monday in Montgomery to discuss strategy.

Members marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Tuesday and met with state leaders at the State House on Wednesday.

The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan helped organize the gathering. Glasgow is the founder of The Ordinary People Society, an out reach group for inmates and former inmates.

Glasgow said group members Wednesday spoke with legislators, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb and Gov. Robert Bentley.

Glasgow said the formerly incarcerated bring a valuable voice to discussions about prison reform.

"When they use us (as a re source), they are talking to experts by experience -- those who have been there, done that," Glasgow said.

Group members emphasize their focus on public service, and they visited an alternative school in Selma on Tuesday as part of a gang- prevention effort.

Glasgow said the group also plans to work with victim rights groups to help make amends for crimes.

They also, however, hope to change some public policy and reform the way the nation's prison systems operate.

To stress the importance of their cause, members point to issues such as the cost of prison overcrowding and how barriers to re-entering society might make felons more likely to return to crime.

Susan Burton created A New Way of Life, a Los Angeles re-entry program, in 1998. She said her drug and alcohol addictions led to six trips to prison, with her last release in 1996.

Burton said the time has come for like-minded people to unite on the issue of prison reform.

"We have no other way to go but to get together and figure it out," said Burton, who was named a CNN "Top 10 Hero" for 2010.

Glasgow said he and Nunn have worked for a long time to organize such a gathering.

"It has been a vision for years," said Glasgow, founder of The Ordinary People Society.

Malik Aziz, founder of the National Exhoodus Council, said the group wants to be an active partner with law enforcement without alienating those who still are incarcerated.

"We want to be a community partner -- a legitimate, recognized partner (with law enforcement). We won't be an informer. That is not what our relation with the police is," said Aziz, a former gang leader from Philadelphia.

Many of the group members talked about the large numbers of prisoners being released back into society.

More than 700,000 prisoners have been released from state and federal custody each year from 2005 to 2009, the most recent year for which the U.S. Department of Justice has gathered statistics.

Many of those people will return to poor economic conditions on top of the barriers to their re-integration into society, said Eddie Ellis of New York.

"There's been no real discussion of what to do with those people," said Ellis, co-founder of the Center for Nu Leadership on Urban Solutions at the City University of New York's Medgar Evers College.

Gabriel Sayegh, New York director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said prison reform is a non-partisan issue.

Sayegh pointed out that critics on both sides of the political aisle have called for prison reform, including Newt Gingrich and the conservative group Right on Crime.

"There is widespread recognition that what we've got has failed," said Sayegh, who was part of a group of sup porters who joined the gathering but are not formerly incarcerated.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization with a stated goal of ending the War on Drugs, helped fund the gathering.

Nunn said the three-day gathering was a success be cause it was the first time it has happened.

He said the next one will be in Los Angeles and will be even bigger as group members recruit other activists.

"It will be double or triple the size of the people we had here," Nunn said.

International Sex Workers' Rights Day: March 3, 2011.

2011-03-03T07:18:00.000-08:00

In memory of Marcia Powell,
and all our other brothers and sisters dying out there....

--------------

SEX WORKERS and HUMAN RIGHTS: Best Practices

Report on The United States of America 9th Round of the Universal Periodic Review – November 2010

1. This report is submitted by the Best Practices Policy Project, Desiree Alliance, and the Sexual Rights Initiative. It focuses on civil and human rights violations of those engaged, or perceived to be engaged, in sexual trade and sex work in the U.S.

Background and Context

2. People involved in sexual trade or sex work in the U.S. are found in a wide array of settings and circumstances; perform a variety of services; and communicate with clients through clubs, on the street, through newspapers, phonebooks, and the internet. They include people of all gender identities who work in clubs, in brothels, in their or other’s homes, in hotels, outdoors, and in other spaces. While sex work is generally stigmatized and aspects of it criminalized, street-based or outdoor workers, transgender or gender non-conforming people, people of color, migrants, and youth consistently bear a particularly heavy burden of police abuse and harassment, institutional discrimination, and violence.

3. Stigmatization of sex workers and those profiled as such in tandem with “zero-tolerance” policing in urban areas where poorer communities are being displaced, operate to ensure that these populations are disproportionately impacted by the prison system. Sex workers in these areas face additional burdens of police violence and abuse. Arrests for sex work can lead to a cycle of continued exclusion from housing and other job opportunities, and to re-imprisonment. Furthermore, because many forms of sex work in the U.S. are treated as a crime, law enforcement officials frequently fail to recognize that sex workers can be victims of crime, and thus deny justice or support to sex workers who seek their help.

Legal and Institutional Framework

4. Criminal prohibition of sex for money and surrounding activities exists in most states (with the exception of some counties in the state of Nevada). Some forms of sex work, such as exotic dancing, may not be prohibited by state legislation but they are always regulated by state and municipal policies. Sex work that occurs in public spaces is also often policed under legislation prohibiting loitering, public nuisance, trespassing or “failure to obey” a police officer’s directive to move along. More states in the U.S. are now mandating minimum sentences so that judges are required to give people convicted for prostitution-related offenses jail time and some states have sentencing guidelines and judicial practices which make a third charge for prostitution-related offenses a felony.

5. While the United States has only ratified a few of the major U.N. human rights treaties, (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture (CAT), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), these treaties have direct bearing on sex workers’ human rights. These include: the right to be free from discrimination; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; the right to healthcare; and the right to equal protection under the law.

The Right to Equal Protection under the Law

6. Sex workers of color in the United States are disproportionately targeted by the police for arrest because of their minority status, violating the U.S. Constitution, international standards against discrimination and treaties such as CERD and ICCPR. Furthermore, people of color from the lowest income communities who do sex work in public spaces to meet their most urgent and immediate needs, are relentlessly and disproportionately targeted by the police. Arrest and subsequent conviction for prostitution and prostitution-related offenses intensifies the homelessness or housing precariousness experienced by people from low-income communities because people with criminal records are barred from accessing, or may lose, their public housing.

7. Transgender women, especially those of color, in the United States are profiled, targeted, harassed, cited and/or falsely arrested by the police as sex workers for simply walking outside. Male sex workers may be harassed by the police in part because of homophobia and women sex workers who are perceived to step outside of traditional female roles (e.g. by failing to be subservient) may be disproportionately targeted for arrest. Gender based discrimination against women and gender non-conforming people violating their right to equal protection under the law is reinforced by anti-prostitution legislation. For example, legislation enacting “Prostitution Free Zones,” areas in which police may move along and arrest people who they believe to be prostitutes, erode legal protections barring officers from detaining individuals on the basis of how they are perceived or the way they are dressed.

8. Another particularly discriminatory practice by state agents is sex offender registration of people convicted for sex work related offenses. In some parts of the U.S., these sex workers are registered as sex offenders for ten years and must carry an identification card with “sex offender” stamped on it, among other penalties. The majority of people sentenced this way are African-American and almost all are women and transgender women. They then face discrimination from employers, housing agents and are unable to qualify for education loans, making it impossible to secure even menial, low-wage work. Because they become completely shut out from other forms of work, many people who are registered as “sex offenders” have no other option but to continue in sex work, potentially returning to prison after subsequent arrests.

9. Many people engaged in sexual exchange, particularly street-based workers, face violence, including assault and rape, and numerous sex workers are murdered each year. The notion that sex workers are “disposable” may be the root cause of this violence. The legal establishment does not conceive that sexual workers can be sexually assaulted and may obstruct sex workers’ attempts to seek justice for crimes committed against them. Such violations of sex workers’ rights lead to a lack of faith in the State providing them with adequate promotion and protection of their lawful human rights, including protection from violence. Furthermore, sex workers fear further harm, humiliation, and/or arrest when turning to the authorities for assistance. Youth thought to be engaged in the sex trade face discrimination and neglect from a wide range of institutions, including hospitals, shelters, treatment centers, Child and Family Services agencies, and law enforcement agencies.

10. Migrant sex workers face the double burden of stigmatization for working in criminalized labor sectors and for their immigrant status. A portion of migrant sex workers are undocumented but even if migrants have correct immigration paperwork, engaging in sex work can both invalidate visas causing deportation and prevent entry into the United States. Anti-prostitution laws can therefore become a tool for immigration officials seeking to deport migrants: recently police have begun arresting large numbers of Latinas, charging them with prostitution related offenses leading to their deportation. When arrested or in court immigrants are often not provided with an interpreter, so they may be completely unaware of the charges brought against them and/or the need for attendance at follow up court dates significantly impacting on their access to criminal justice.

11. Misguided U.S. law and policy addressing trafficking in persons makes the lives of migrant sex workers more difficult. Migrant workers may be arrested, detained and subsequently deported in “raid and rescue” missions carried out by local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. The current prosecution-oriented approach to anti-trafficking work in the US also traumatizes trafficked persons. People trafficked into the sex sector in the United States are forced to comply with law enforcement and endure possible “re-victimization” in order to get benefits and status. Migrant sex workers have become increasingly wary of service providers because of the operation of some anti-trafficking organizations that have provided information about work places to law enforcement authorities leading to raids, arrest and deportation. U.S. anti-trafficking policies undermine the health and rights of sex workers both domestically and internationally by requiring that organizations seeking funding adopt a policy against sex work (“anti-prostitution pledge”).

Freedom from torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment

12. U.S. sex workers’ greatest fear is abuse by the police and other state agents. Organizations working with sex workers have documented a pattern of practice by police towards sex workers, which includes assault, sexual harassment and rape that constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Street sex workers and other people who are often profiled as prostitutes (such as transgender women) are very frequently subjected to this kind of treatment. When sex workers seek recourse for crimes committed against them, officers do not take their reports seriously or may further violate these sex workers by arresting them, physically assaulting them or pressuring them for sex.

The Right to Adequate Health Care

13. Criminalization, marginalization and stigma prevent sex workers from enjoying their right to health by undermining their access to adequate health care and the conditions in which they live and work. The U.S. Government has failed to ensure adequate access to health services and support for sex workers. They are not provided with HIV prevention and education services that would help them protect their own health and the health of their customers. Furthermore, policing directly undermines sex workers’ ability to prevent the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections because of the widespread law enforcement practice of using condoms as evidence and/or destroying condoms and safe sex materials.

14. Sex workers in the United States are very unlikely to discuss their work with medical providers because of fears about how they will be treated in addition to their fears of the law. These fears are based on real lived experiences. Sex workers who approach police with severe injuries from violence perpetrated against them are routinely belittled and blamed for the attacks against them and are not escorted, or even referred, to emergency rooms. Further, individuals in medical facilities seeking care for injuries sustained from attacks against them who are profiled as sex workers have been accusatorily questioned by police prior to receiving medical care. Sex worker friendly services providers capable of addressing the full range of their health needs (reproductive health care, sexual health, counseling, assistance with domestic violence, etc) are few and far between in the United States and significantly under-funded. Many mainstream service providers are not prepared to understand sex workers’ needs; services for men in sex work are extremely limited.

Recommendations

The United States of America should:

15. Implement rigorous training of law enforcement officials on legal and human rights standards with regards to sex work. e.g. police training on issues relating to gender, race, ethnicity, age and addressing crimes that may be committed against sex workers including the importance of referring victims of crime to rape crisis and trauma support agencies.

16. Institute mechanisms that allow sex workers to find redress for human rights violations and hold law enforcement accountable for their actions, e.g. officers who subject sex workers to degrading treatment and abuse, must be subject to appropriate disciplinary procedures. Sex workers must be able to report police misconduct and violence while being protected from retaliation.

17. Repeal laws, including laws against prostitution and prostitution-related offenses, and eliminate policies, such as “zero tolerance” of prostitution, “prostitution free zones,” and “quality of life” measures, that undermine protection and respect for human rights of sex workers, people in the sex trade and other marginalized groups. Sex workers should also be able to expunge any criminal records relating to these laws.

18. Repeal the application of felony-level charges and mandatory minimum sentencing against people arrested for sex work and expunge the records of those arrested and charged under these laws.

19. Remove any and all sex offender registration requirements of those arrested for engaging in prostitution or “unnatural copulation,” and expunge the records of those arrested for sex work and charged under laws that mandate sex offender registration.

20. Change policies that prevent sex workers from applying for and/or receiving student loans and public housing.

21. Invest resources in education, job training, healthcare, and housing programs for marginalized people engaged in sex work and the sex trade. Specifically, funding for low-income communities and communities of color should be allocated to provide job training, education programs, apprenticeships, healthcare, and housing opportunities;

22. Provide funding for harm reduction and rights based health care services for male, female, and transgender sex workers. Lift all restrictions on federal funding for harm reduction programs.

23. Prohibit agencies that receive public funding from discriminating against people engaged in sex work or in the sex trade.

24. Immediately end the law enforcement practice of using possession of condoms and other safe sex supplies as evidence of a crime.

25. Provide comprehensive services and legal support for migrant sex workers, including language interpretation in the criminal justice system.

26. Reorient anti-trafficking campaigns to be in line with the standards set by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

27. Repeal and remove “anti-prostitution pledge” requirements for U.S. Global AIDS Funds and anti-trafficking funds.

New Prison Action Newsletter out now

2011-03-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

Prison Action Newsletter (PAN) vol 4, issue 1 (Jan. 2011) is available here (PDF). Published via the Boston ABC.

Be sure to download a copy and send it to incarcerated friends and loved ones, or link to it!

Direct link: http://boston.indymedia.org/usermedia/application/11/212339_Pan_4.1_Internet_Version.pdf

Former prisoners meet to form a movement: Feb. 28-March 2 in Alabama

2011-02-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

Former prisoners meet to form a movement: Feb. 28-March 2 in Alabama
SF Bay View, Feb 18th, 2011

On Feb. 28-March 2, 2011, a group of activists who have first-hand experience regarding inhumanities of the American prison industrial complex will convene in Alabama to lay the groundwork for a national civil rights movement. This conference of affected peoples grows out of broader momentum over the past decade, with many formerly incarcerated activists unifying to establish their own conference, for their own agenda, … as part of their own movement.

“What you are seeing now in Georgia,” says Pastor Kenny Glasgow of The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS), “is a response to inhumane prison conditions and thousands of people’s sense of hopelessness.” He is referring to the Dec. 9 prison labor stoppage across the Georgia system, the largest prisoner protest in American history. “It has become so systematic,” he says, “the prison industry has managed to unite us.” Over 3,000 people have signed a solidarity petition in support of the prisoners.

America, with 5 percent of the planet’s population, holds 25 percent of the prisoners. The 2.3 million exist in a gulag of state, federal and for-profit prisons, while nearly 10 million people currently live under some manner of government supervision. This would be the eighth largest state in the nation. It is unknown exactly how many millions have a criminal record, or are family of those who have once been inside the prison industrial complex, but some estimates exceed 10 million released prisoners in America and 50 million with criminal records.

TOPS Youth is only one of the many activities of The Ordinary People's Society in Dothan, Alabama. Others are the Prodigal Child Project, Restoring the Family, Momma Tina's Soup Kitchen and maintaining the TOPS complex and church. TOPS has earned 501c (3) and 501c (4) nonprofit status.

Linda Evans, co-founder of All of Us or None, puts this gathering in a historical perspective: “Holding the first of two national gatherings at the epicenter of the civil rights struggle is a symbolic action of great power, invoking similar moments such as Stonewall, the Great Grape Boycott, and the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments. The rights of prisoners, including those who were there and those who are targeted to go there, need all of us to share our wisdom and unite our struggle.” Events will occur in Montgomery, Dothan and Selma, including a backwards march over Edmund Pettis Bridge.

The conference is being organized by a Steering Committee consisting of Malik Aziz (Philadelphia), Susan Burton (Los Angeles), Pastor Kenny Glasgow (Dothan, Alabama), Arthur League, Aaliyah Muhammed and Dorsey Nunn (San Francisco/Oakland), Bruce Reilly (Providence) and Tina Reynolds (New York). Participants will be putting aside their local struggles in order to develop a common platform regarding restoration of civil rights, stopping prison expansion, elimination of excessive punishments and protecting the dignity of family members. The Steering Committee will organize dozens of others to convene in Alabama.

Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, shown here in his church, was a leading member of the team that went into Georgia prisons and met with prison officials following the sit-down strike by thousands of prisoners across the state that started Dec. 9. They followed up on prisoners’ demands, investigated reports of brutal reprisals and sought information on 37 prisoners missing since the strike and labeled as organizers.

We need donations, frequent flyer miles, motel rooms or any help you can give those who may not be able to come on their own

The Alabama Convention will be the beginning for activating a movement. Next stop: Los Angeles, on Nov. 1, 2011. Allies and supporters should send donations, via paypal, at www.theordinarypeoplesociety.com or by mail to: TOPS, 403 W. Powell Street, Dothan, AL 36303, to assist with the expenses of the event. People can also get involved, as participants or supporters, by supporting civil rights of the formerly incarcerated. A political agenda will be established by a collaborative process and provide opportunity for strategic support.

This national conference is supported by All of Us or None, World Conference of Mayors, Drug Policy Alliance, The Ordinary People Society, Equal Justice Initiative, Rev. Al Sampson, Dr. C.T. Vivian, Prodigal Child Project, National Justice Coalition, Rev. Al Sharpton, New Bottom Line, National Second Chance Council, National Exhoodus Council, A New Way of Life, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH), Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), MN Second Chance Coalition and others.

Those seeking more information should contact Dorsey Nunn at dorsey@prisonerswithchildren.org or (415) 516-9599 or Pastor Kenny Glasgow, alabamaalliance@yahoo.com or (334) 791-2433. Visit TOPS on the web at www.wearetops.org, www.theordinarypeoplesociety.com, wearetops.blogspot.com or www.ordinarypeoplenews.com.

Ohio Prison Emergency Summit: 26 Feb

2011-02-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network, 216-925-9108 lucasvillefreedom@gmail.com

“PRISON EMERGENCY SUMMIT”: ALL-DAY CONFERENCE AT CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, CALLED BY COMMUNITY GROUPS IN CONJUNCTION WITH CSU’S BLACK STUDIES DEPARTMENT

Using the success of the recent hunger strike of three Lucasville uprising prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary as a jumping off point, the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network has reached out to community groups, student organizations, academics with special interest in prison issues and prisoner advocacy networks to form an exciting conference at Cleveland State University. The Prison Emergency Summit will start with registration, refreshments and networking at 9:00 am on Saturday, Feb. 26. The presentations by keynote speakers will begint at 10:00 am. Six workshops on topics of pressing concern will take place in the afternoon.

“It is always good to introduce a wide variety of knowledge,” stated Dr. Michael Williams, Director of the CSU’s Black Studies Department. The conference will be taking place in Lecture Hall #201 and smaller break out rooms, one floor above the department, which is Room #MC137 in the Main Classroom Building at 1899 E. 22nd Street at Chester Avenue.

One of the highlights of the conference will be the screening of “Dark Little Secret,” a new documentary by Youngstown filmmaker D Jones, examining the U.S. prison system. D Jones is an Instructor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University.

Conference topics will include: the campaign to overturn the false convictions of the Lucasville uprising prisoners; the strike of 20,000 prisoners in Georgia; Mumia Abu-Jamal, Imam Al-Amin and other political prisoners; the privatization of Ohio’s prisons; and whether today’s prisons represent the re-imposition of slavery. There will also be cultural presentations, including drumming and poetry.

A partial list of co-sponsors of the Prison Emergency Summit includes: Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network, New Black Panther Party-Cleveland Link, Black on Black Crime Inc., Survivors/Victims of Tragedy Inc., Peoples Fightback Center, Workers World Party, Cleveland FIST, Oppressed Peoples Nation, LOOP (Loved Ones Of Prisoners), Cleveland Anarchist Black Cross, and the Joaquin Hicks Real People Movement. For more info, call 216-925-9108 or email lucasvillefreedom@gmail.com .

Hawai'i prisoner held in private prison in AZ speaks out on money being earned on prisoners

2011-02-08T02:57:00.000-08:00

I've been encouraging the prisoners I correspond with lately to write about their experiences, perspectives, etc. so I can publish them. This is one of the first responses I've received to that invitation. The author's address is below if anyone wants to discuss his thoughts with him; he took some risk doing this so others could get a look inside the place. We're going to keep in touch just to make sure he makes parole as scheduled without any problems from CCA.

So, heads up there, CCA. I'm inside your prisons, now, too.

- Peg, Arizona Prison Watch

----------------------------------------

January 27, 2011

To those who want to know the truth:

My name is Thad Thompson. I'm from Hawai'i. I'm currently incarcerated in Hawaii's Department of Public Safety. I am presently at a private CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) facility named Saguaro Correctional Center over here in Arizona.

Where do I start, y'all? This place is a disgrace to all decent humanity. First of all, I'd like you to think about what it means to be a "private" facility. Yes it means that these places are owned and operated just like Walmart. THESE PLACES ARE FOR PROFIT!!! Everything they do, they are actually trying to keep people locked up so that they can make money. As a cowboy or cattle ranchers main product is cattle, his or her main focus is to exploit, or make money off of, cattle. And so as a private facility's main products are prisoners we prisoners are exploited to make money off of. Things are bad and only getting worse.

To give you a specific example of how bad it is, listen to this. There's this program here called the SHIP (Special Housing Incentive Program) which is a program completely devised and ran by CCA. They claim it's a rehabilitation program. And by presenting this program to the State of Hawaii they got MORE money per head then the average for each bed occupied in this program. So if you think about this, you'd see that these guys are locking us up in a program which has similar to Supermax housing for 18 months for no other reason but to get this extra money. They totally fabricated write-ups and situations to put anyone they want into this program. And in this program we're going without proper hygiene (i.e. lotion, deodorant, etc.) warm clothing, or even cleaning chemicals. I could go on and on.

And then to top off all that these guys are literally making stuff up to issue out write-ups while in this program which in the end end holds people back longer in this program. What they're doing is making sure this program is filled with as many inmates as possible!! More inmates means more money.

For another example of how bad things are and are getting worse, check this out. Hawai'i has had inmates in CCA facilities since 1995. In 2007 Hawai'i bought and built its own facility (this one) to be filled only with Hawai'i inmates as we were previously spread out among a few different CCA's across the country. In 2010, only 2 1/2 years after arriving our population experienced its first and second murders (inmate on inmate) ever, since being involved with CCA facilities. And also we've had a severe beating of a staff member here which all shows that the amount of abuse being committed against us is starting to take it's toll and the negative effects are showing. You can only beat a dog so much before it will start to act up and bite back.

I hear this abuse here is being explained all over the internet. Take a look. Maybe you can help. I'm still here!!!

E a me aloha,

Thad Thompson #A5013250
Saguaro Correctional Center
1252 East Arica Rd
Eloy, AZ 85131

Cuba: Jailed journalists on hunger strike

2011-02-08T02:49:00.000-08:00

From: Reporters without Borders
Friday 4 February 2011

Pedro Argüelles Morán, one of four journalists in jailed Cuba, began a hunger strike 1 February to protest against the authorities’ efforts to force him into exile as the price for freeing him.

Reporters Without Borders has appealed to him and another jailed journalist Albert Santiago du Bouchet, who has also started a hunger strike, to call off their action.

“At the same time we call on the Cuban authorities to listen to reason and recognize that those journalists still in jail have the inalienable right to live in their own country and to exercise their right to inform there,” the press freedom body said.

“This deafness is the more incomprehensible in that one of the 41 dissidents freed, out of the 52 envisaged, has had the right to stay in Cuba given to him.

“The government in Havana, bound by its international commitments in the field of human rights, cannot make its own citizens stateless.”

Pedro Argüelles Morán is one of the three journalists behind bars since the “Black Spring” of March 2003, the others being Iván Hernández Carrillo and Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez. Their refusal to leave the country has kept them in jail.

During this time four other prisoners whose names did not originally appear on the list of those who could be freed to go to Spain from July 2010 have agreed to leave shortly for Madrid.

Reporters Without Borders understands that Pedro Argüelles Morán was summoned on 20 January by the director of the prison at Canaleta in the province of Ciego de Ávila, where he is serving a jail sentence of 20 years for his opinions under the false pretext of “espionage.”

During the interview the director, aided by two state officials, tried to persuade him to leave the country as a way of getting out of prison. Pedro Argüelles Morán, almost blind and very weak after seven years in detention, refused, repeating that he was innocent, and demanded the right to stay in his country as a Cuban citizen.

He is reported to have refused to take a call from the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who had negotiated the recent liberation of political prisoners with the Spanish government and Cuban authorities.

His hunger strike comes as the first anniversary approaches of the death of the dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in prison from a lack of medical care after 80 days of hunger strike.

In a gesture of respect Albert Santiago du Bouchet has decided in his turn to stop taking food from 1 February for 23 days. He was given three years for “disrespect for authority” in 2009.

Reporters Without Borders called on the two men to stop their hunger strikes.

“The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, which profoundly affected international opinion, was not without influence on the process of the freeing of the dissidents,” the press freedom body said.

“A year later, do the authorities want to create other insoluble situations by giving political prisoners the choice between prison and losing their roots?”

Separately, Reporters Without Borders hopes very shortly to know the reasons for the arrest and detention since 11 July last year in Cuba of Sebastián Martínez Ferrate. He is a Spanish former producer and freelance journalist who in 2008 produced a report on child prostitution in Cuba. He ceased his activities in 2009 well before his last visit to Cuba.

"Reporters Without Borders hopes, in the absence of clear explanations on the part of the Cuban authorities, that this detention is not connected to the journalistic work previously carried out by Sebastián Martínez Ferrate,” the organization said.

“The Cuban government has, according to our sources, apparently put forward reasons relating to national security. We have not forgotten that this type of argument has regularly been used to send to prison journalists who were only carrying out their duties.”

Reprieve Encourages Supporters to Write to Prisoners in Guantánamo

2011-01-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

From Andy Worthington´s Blog:

19.1.11

In the Guardian’s Comment is free yesterday, Cortney Busch of Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent 15 of the remaining 173 prisoners in Guantánamo, encouraged Guardian readers to write to prisoners who might be losing hope because of the failure of the Obama administration to close the prison as promised — and as I described in my recent articles, Guantánamo Forever? and The Political Prisoners of Guantánamo.
Writing to the prisoners is an excellent idea, and one that I last helped promote last June, when some Facebook friends and activists took it upon themselves to encourage people to write to all the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo. I’m also pleased to have helped to encourage people to write to prisoners through my involvement in the creation of a short film of former prisoner Omar Deghayes showing cards and letters he received while in Guantánamo, and speaking about what they meant to him and to the other prisoners, which was filmed as part of the making of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and is included in the promotion for Amnesty International’s letter-writing campaign.

I’m pleased, therefore, to cross-post Cortney’s article below — and am also pleased that she specifically mentioned Younous Chekkouri, described as “one of the most peaceful and cooperative” prisoners, whose calmness and intelligence struck me when I was researching my book The Guantánamo Files five years ago, and trawling through the publicly available documents released (after a lawsuit) by the Pentagon.
I was delighted to hear that Younous “comes to each attorney meeting with a stack of pictures of roses to distribute to [Cortney's] Reprieve colleagues as tokens of thanks,” and also to discover that he is a Sufi — something that, in all these years, I had never discovered. However, I also fear that, despite his formidable inner peace, and his valid explanations for being in Afghanistan (available here), Younous is regarded as one of the 48 prisoners that the Obama administration intends to hold indefinitely without charge or trial.

Pen pals can give hope to Guantánamo prisoners
Cortney Busch, The Guardian, January 18, 2011
The latest US legislation is causing dozens held at Guantánamo Bay to lose hope — but you can make a difference

When Reprieve attorney Cori Crider met her youngest client, 19-year-old Mohammed el Gharani, before his release from Guantánamo Bay in 2009, he made an unexpected request. He asked if she knew how he could get hold of some books, ideally on history or politics, to help him prepare himself for the outside world.

Mohammed had been sold to the US for a bounty when he was just 14, and spent his school years in Guantánamo’s military prison. He was worried that he would appear ignorant when he emerged. Reprieve put out a call and was quickly inundated with donated books, which Mohammed received with delight. But what encouraged him most were the hundreds of notes scrawled inside the covers — messages of humanity and kindness that Guantánamo prisoners rarely, if ever, receive.

Today Mohammed is a free man, and working hard at setting up his own laundrette in Chad. But many of his fellow detainees remain imprisoned — and have just been dealt a fresh and crushing blow. The National Defense Authorization Act 2011, recently signed into US law, bans the use of military funds to bring Guantánamo prisoners before US civilian courts — and makes releasing the 89 men who are already cleared to leave much more difficult. President Obama has criticised these provisions, promising to repeal them or to mitigate their effects. But for the moment the mood among Guantánamo’s prisoners is distinctly gloomy. This is why Reprieve is now asking people to take the unusual step of writing them letters of support.

A Guantánamo pen pal may seem a daunting prospect, but from my trips to the island prison over the past year I can personally recommend Younous Chekkouri, widely regarded as one of the most peaceful and cooperative detainees. He bears no ill will towards Americans and comes to each attorney meeting with a stack of pictures of roses to distribute to my Reprieve colleagues as tokens of thanks. Far from being a violent jihadi, Younous is a Sufi — a strikingly benign strand of Islam that values love and peace above all.

So how did such a person end up in Guantánamo? Much like Mohammed el Gharani, Younous was “sold” to the Americans. When the US declared war on Afghanistan in 2001, Younous and his wife fled Kabul for Pakistan, only to find that men of Arabic descent had become precious commodities. American forces were offering bounties of $5,000 (£3,125) per head to anyone who handed over a “terrorist”. The fliers offering the money promised schools, doctors, housing and unimaginable wealth for the reader and the community. Hundreds of people were rounded up, arrested en masse and sold to the US, and Younous found himself caught up in one of these sweeps and ultimately transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

Almost nine years later, Younous, like dozens of other men still held at Guantánamo, has never been charged with a crime or given the chance to clear his name. In fact, his challenge to his detention has only just reached the courtroom. As a member of Younous’s legal team, I know we have a good case that should soon, by rights, set him free. But I also know that Younous, like the other 172 men left in Guantánamo, is now beginning to despair of ever being released.

For many of these men, the last eight or nine years have been spent hundreds of miles from family and friends, without compassion and very little hope. Yet these are perhaps their darkest days yet. Please consider writing one of them a letter. As with the messages scrawled in Mohammed’s books, even the smallest word of encouragement lets them know they are not forgotten.

For details on how to write to one of Guantánamo’s “forgotten” prisoners, please visit this page on Reprieve’s website.

Note: Reprieve’s initiative contains the names and brief stories of some of the 173 men still held, and the following instructions for those planning to write:
Please address all letters to:
Detainee Name
Detainee ISN
Guantánamo Bay
P.O. Box 160
Washington, D.C. 20053
United States of America
Include a return address on the envelope.

Further information about prisoners to whom readers might want to write is available on the page I compiled last June for a similar project, Write to the Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo, and more detailed information about the men still held can be found in my nine-part series profiling the men still held, available via the following page: Introducing the Definitive List of the Remaining Prisoners in Guantánamo.

And finally, the short video below is of Mohammed El-Gharani thanking supporters for the many books that they sent him after Reprieve launched a campaign to help him:

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

A great rally, a great victory for the Lucasville hunger strikers

2011-01-16T04:08:00.000-08:00

January 15, 2011

by Denis O’Hearn
SF Bay View and Facebook

Jan. 15, 4:33 p.m. – I have a short report on today’s rally at the Ohio State Penitentiary in support of the three men on hunger strike. But first, I can now report to you the wonderful news that all three have resumed eating because they achieved a victory. The prison authorities have provided, in writing, a set of conditions that virtually meets the demands set out by Bomani Shakur in his letter to Warden Bobby, provided below.

Ohio State Penitentiary

The hunger strikers send you all thanks for your support and state that they couldn’t have won their demands without support from people from around the world. But they add to their statement the following: This time they were fighting about their conditions of confinement, but now they begin the fight for their lives.

They were wrongfully convicted of complicity in 1993 murders in Lucasville prison and have faced retribution because they refused to provide snitch testimony against others who actually committed those murders. Now, because of Ohio’s – and other states’ – application of the death penalty, they still face execution at a future date. Ohio is today exceeded only by Texas in its enthusiasm for applying the death penalty. We need to take some of this energy that was created around the hunger strike to help these men fight for their lives.

So, we may celebrate a great victory for now. Common sense has prevailed in a dark place where there appeared to be no light. But watch this space for further news on their ongoing campaign.

I hope to share a copy of the Ohio prison authorities’ written statement that ended this hunger strike in a short time.

As Bomani has told me many times, “It ain’t over …”

Jan. 15, 4:40 p.m. – The rally at OSP was attended by a large crowd, including many members of the families of the hunger strikers, despite the freezing weather. Family members met with the hunger strikers this morning and they reported that they were in high spirits on ending their hunger strike and winning their demands, but that they now had to turn their attention to their death sentences.

Statements of support came from all over the world and a small delegation of relatives, along with Alice Lynd, went to the prison and left a copy of our open letter for Warden David Bobby, signed by more than 1,200 people including prominent people from Ohio and around the world. Warden Bobby was not there, but a designated representative received the letter on his behalf with a promise that he would read it.
The crowd then proceeded to a church hall in downtown Youngstown for refreshments and some celebration over the good news. The organizers, especially Sharon Danann and Alice and Staughton Lynd, want to thank everyone who supported these men for their contribution to this victory.

Our thoughts are with Bomani, Hasan, Jason and Namir, and we will remain at their sides.

Denis O’Hearn is professor of sociology at Binghamton University SUNY. His book, “Nothing But an Unfinished Song,” is a biography of the Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. This story first appeared on the Facebook page “In Solidarity with the Lucasville Uprising Prisoners on Hunger Strike.” Contact Denis O’Hearn through Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1533483976&v=wall.