Prisoner rights

Federal Prisons Locked Down To Quash Black Lives Matter Protests

July 25, 2020 Carter Deane, Solitary Watch. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Bureau of Prisons, Prisoner rights, Prisons

On June 2, for the first time in 25 years, the Bureau of Prisons directed all federal jails and prisons to implement a full lockdown, confining nearly 160,000 people to their cells and severely limiting contact with the outside world. The following day, on the orders of Attorney General William Barr, the Bureau pulled some of its most militarized units out of BOP facilities and deployed them to confront protesters on the streets of Washington, D.C. Typically, a lockdown occurs in a single facility at the discretion of the warden, usually in response to temporary incidents like fights or, more rarely, longer-term issues like inadequate staffing levels.

Poultry And Prisons: Toward A General Strike For Abolition

July 24, 2020 Carrie Freshour, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Poultry Plant, Prison abolition, Prisoner rights, Worker Rights

On April 28, 2020, Donald Trump utilized the Defense Production Act to keep meat-processing plants open. As of this writing, twenty-two plants have closed, if only temporarily, after large numbers of workers tested positive for COVID-19.1 Yet, the number of worker deaths across the industry, including four workers at a Tyson chicken-processing plant in Camilla, Georgia, continues to rise.2 Black workers, who make up a majority of the Tyson plant’s workforce, live in neighboring Dougherty county. This county was once central to the cotton-producing region of the Black Belt, constructed through the violence of plantation slavery entwined with the productivity of the soil.

Justice Department Report Finds Systemic Excessive Use Of Force By Prison Guards

July 24, 2020 Eddie Burkhalter, Alabama Political Reporter. Educate! Alabama, Department of Justice, Prisoner rights, State Violence

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday released a report that details why the federal government believes systemic use of excessive force within Alabama’s prisons for men violates the Eighth Amendment. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Northern, Middle and Southern Districts of Alabama found systemic problems of unreported or underreported excessive use of force incidents, a failure to properly investigate them and attempts by correctional officers and their supervisors to cover them up.

Housing Rules Could Force Newly Released Prisoners Into Homelessness

July 24, 2020 Jerry Iannelli, The Appeal. Educate! Homeslessness, Housing, New York City (NYC), Prisoner rights

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the population of New York City’s jails has been nearly halved. According to New York state data, the city’s average daily jail population dropped from 7,214 people in June 2019 to 3,878 in June 2020—a 46 percent decline. And according to the most recent jail reduction fact sheet from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the city released nearly 3,400 people from local jails between March 16 and May 25 alone. These releases most likely represent the largest single cut to the city’s jail population in history.

Chris Hedges: This Is Kabir’s America

July 22, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Homeless, Prison, Prisoner rights, Racism

Robert “Kabir” Luma was 18 when he found himself in the wrong car with the wrong people. He would pay for that misjudgment with 16 years and 54 days of his life, locked away for a crime he did not participate in and did not know was going to take place. Released from prison, he was tossed onto the street, without financial resources and, because of fines and fees imposed on him by the court system, $7,000 of debt. He ended up broke in a homeless shelter in Newark, populated with others who could not afford a place to live, addicts and the mentally ill. The shelter was filthy, infested with lice and bedbugs. “You have to chain your food up in the refrigerator,” he said, wearing a worn, ripped sweatshirt, when I met him at the Newark train station. “There’s a chain on the door. There’s no stove. There’s one microwave that is on its way out. It stinks. I’m trying to stay positive.”

As COVID-19 Stalks Florida’s Inmates, So Does Another Plague

July 21, 2020 Shirso Dasgupta and Samantha J. Gross, McClatchy DC. Educate! extreme heat, health, Prison, Prisoner rights

“They are dying in the heat,” said the distraught mother of an inmate at Dade Correctional Institution south of Miami. “What have we done to deserve this. … How is it possible, knowing how hot it is here?” “We have gone an entire week without a set of showers ⁠— two were turned off last week because one of them wouldn’t turn off, so they just turned the water off and have not been back to fix it,” wrote an inmate at Avon Park Correctional Institution, a prison in Highlands County, in an email shared with the Miami Herald. “Plus the water temp is too hot to stand under and they won’t turn it down.” As temperatures in Florida soar into the 90s, accounts by inmates and their loved ones, shared with the Herald on condition of anonymity, provide a glimpse of the condition of inmates housed in overcrowded prisons without proper ventilation.

Hard Times: ‘It’s Like They’re Trying To Kill Us’

July 18, 2020 Matthew Vernon Whalen, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Alabama, Health Care, Prisoner rights, Prisons

American prisoners are incarcerated for years, often decades, often a majority of his or her life. Many prisoners serving more than a couple years are transferred from one prison to another, often multiple times, throughout their sentences. For this story, I spoke to three long-term Alabama prisoners about their experiences being transferred to a different prison mid-sentence or waking up to learn their friends have been transferred – including in the middle of a pandemic – and tried to square them with official policy. Linda Mays, Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) Communications Director, said that there are “numerous specific reasons that inmates are transferred” from one prison to another mid-sentence, but “it is impossible to explore every scenario” in which transfers occur.

COVID-19 Behind The Walls

July 7, 2020 Miranda Crissman, Workers.org. Educate! COVID-19, Detention Centers, Prisoner rights, Prisons

At least 48,764 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among prisoners. The data suggest that even these numbers may be underreported. Texas leads in the number of cases with 7,757, followed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons with 6,621 cases. Ohio, Michigan, California and Tennessee are right behind Texas and the BOP with 4,950, 3,991, 3,800, and 3,171 cases, respectively. At least 585 prisoner deaths from the virus have been reported, with 91 from the federal BOP, 84 in Ohio, 69 in Texas, 68 in Michigan and the rest in other states. As far as prison staff are concerned, 10,342 cases and 42 deaths have been reported. (The Marshall Project, June 25) Across the country, 658 youth in juvenile facilities and 771 staff members have reportedly been infected with the virus.

San Quentin Inmates On Hunger Strike

July 5, 2020 By Dominique Mosbergen, HuffPost. Resist! COVID-19, health, Hunger Strike, Prisoner rights

Several men incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison who have tested positive for COVID-19 have gone on a hunger strike to protest what they call “dismal” living conditions, KNTV in San Jose reported Wednesday. More than 1,100 active coronavirus cases have been reported at San Quentin, California’s oldest prison and home to the state’s only death row. At least one person, a 71-year-old death row inmate, has died of complications from the coronavirus. The hunger strike at San Quentin, north of San Francisco, began Monday, The Appeal reported. The strikers are protesting inhumane and cramped conditions inside a unit known as the Badger section, where some people with COVID-19 are being housed, two inmates told the publication.

Prisoners Mobilize For Black Lives And Against Brutality Behind Bars

July 4, 2020 Ella Fassler, Truthout. Resist! Police abuse, Prisoner rights, Prisons, Racism

Prisoners say that abuse reminiscent of the “modern-day lynching” of George Floyd is common practice behind bars. Swift Justice, who is also incarcerated at Kilby Correctional Facility and prefers a pseudonym, tells Truthout: “What happens in here is just like the rhetoric police on the street used to justify killings.” Outside of prison, the officers say, “‘He had a gun or appeared to have a gun,’” Swift explains. In prison, they often say, “‘he had a knife, or failed to comply with the direct order.’ And in here it’s hard to prove different and, we don’t have cell phones to capture it. These guys in here know it and it scares them! And rightfully so.” Potential, another Black man confined at a different facility in Alabama, says that guards “know where the cameras are and where they aren’t. They take guys where there aren’t cameras and they will beat the sh*t out of them. That’s the system here. And the supervisors allow it

Chris Hedges: My Student Comes Home

June 30, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Prison Industrial Complex, Prisoner rights, Youth imprisonment

Rahway, New Jersey - When Lawrence Bell, an orphan living in an abandoned house in Camden, New Jersey, went to prison, he was 14-years-old. Barely literate and weighing no more than 90 pounds, he had been pressured by three Camden police detectives into signing a confession for a murder and rape he insisted at his trial he did not commit, although admitted he was in the car of the man who dragged a young mother into the bushes where she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. It made no difference. The confession condemned him, although there was no scientific evidence or any independent witnesses tying him to the crime. He would not be eligible to go before a parole board for 56 years. It was a de facto life sentence.

Inside The US’s Largest Maximum-Security Prison, COVID-19 Raged

June 26, 2020 By Anat Rubin, Tim Golden, and Richard A. Webster, ProPublica. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Prison, Prisoner rights

While the novel coronavirus burned through Angola, as the country’s largest maximum-security prison is known, officials insisted they were testing all inmates who showed symptoms, isolating those who got sick and transferring more serious cases to the hospital in Baton Rouge, about 60 miles to the south. But from inside Angola’s walls, inmates painted a very different picture — one of widespread illness, dysfunctional care and sometimes inexplicable neglect. They said at least four of the 12 prisoners who have died in the pandemic, including Williams, had been denied needed medical help for days because their symptoms were not considered sufficiently serious. Despite having test kits available, Angola also sharply limited its testing of prisoners during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, screening at most a few hundred of the roughly 5,500 held there.

Video Captures Poor Conditions At Plant Where Prisoners Are Sent To Work

May 29, 2020 Jerry Iannelli, The Appeal. Resist! COVID-19, Poultry Plant, Prisoner rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

Kia Jones says her brother would stop working at Louisiana’s meatpacking facilities if he could. Earlier this month, Jones’s brother sent her a video from the poultry plant where he’s working—and she says she was horrified at what she saw. The clip, which Jones shared with The Appeal, shows workers at the DG Foods poultry plant in Bastrop, a small town of about 10,000 people in Morehouse Parish, using a dirty bathroom with standing water on the floor, soap missing from dispensers, and seats ripped from toilets and thrown onto the floor. But Jones’s brother—who she asked to not be named out of fear that prison guards would retaliate against him—can’t quit. He’s imprisoned at the Ouachita Parish sheriff’s office Transitional Work Program facility in Monroe; every day, Jones says, her brother is bused about 25 miles north to the DG Foods facility, where he works an eight-hour shift alongside members of the public.

Baton Rouge Inmates Sue For Release Due To COVID-19, Potential ‘Death Sentence’

May 28, 2020 By Lea Skene, The Advocate. Resist! COVID-19, health, Prison abuse, Prisoner rights

The inmates are seeking class-action status in an attempt to protect other current and future inmates. Their lawsuit also seeks to have a federal judge order East Baton Rouge to improve jail conditions and inmate treatment, including providing sufficient cleaning supplies and requiring staff to wear personal protective equipment. At least 70 inmates have tested positive and 48 of them have recovered, according to the sheriff's office. Several civil rights attorneys and organizations teamed up on the lawsuit, including the Advancement Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights. David Utter, an attorney on the case who also represents multiple families of people who have died in Parish Prison before coronavirus said, "The notion that we would expose anyone to the jail's conditions and health care system during this pandemic makes no sense."

Federal Court Restores Voting Rights To Hundreds Of Thousands Of Florida Prisoners

May 25, 2020 By ACLU. Create! Democracy, Elections, Prisoner rights, Voting Rights

A federal court on May 24, 2020 ruled that a Florida law that created wealth-based hurdles to voting is unconstitutional. The decision restores voting rights to hundreds of thousands of people with past criminal convictions. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle found that conditioning voting on payment of legal financial obligations a person is unable to pay violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating on the basis of wealth. The court's decision implements Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to more than a million people who had completed the terms of their sentence including parole or probation.

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