Prisoner rights

May 30 Day Of Action: Stop Racist Murder And Violence

May 21, 2020 the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. Resist! COVID-19, Police abuse, Prisoner rights, Racism

We will be protesting to stop the racist murder and violence that this administration has willfully unleashed. Not only is the government standing by as COVID-19 ravages African American, Latinx, and Indigenous communities—inciting mass Black death with their calls to reopen the economy, but the police and racist vigilantes continue to brazenly hunt and kill Black folks while they sleep in their beds and on open roads in broad daylight. We are calling for this united action to protest genocidal policies of the government that have allowed city and county jails, federal and state prisons, juvenile detention jails, and Immigrant detention centers.

#FreeBlackMamas Demand Prisoner Release

May 19, 2020 Joe Piette, Workers.org. Resist! COVID-19, Decarceration, Prisoner rights, Prisons

Philadelphia - Protesters, led by currently and formerly incarcerated women, trans and non gender-binary people, held a rally on May 15 in a city park next to Riverside Correctional Facility to demand the release of people held in Philadelphia jails and an end to unjust cash bail. The action featured speeches by women recently released from RCF, as well as people still incarcerated who joined by phone. Everyone respected social distancing and mask requirements due to the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers on both sides of the prison walls planned the action. It was broadcast via radio so incarcerated people could listen to the speakers. Huge signs with slogans reading, “Free Our People!” and “Free Black Mamas!” were held up for people at RCF to see. In turn, they made noise and banged on cell doors to join the protest and demand their release.

Protesters Make Their Voices, And Horns, Heard Over Conditions At Prison

May 11, 2020 Aaron Thomas, WRAL Resist! COVID-19, Prisoner rights

Protesters calling attention to conditions inside state prisons took to the streets to voice their concerns and honk their horns at Central Prison in Raleigh. Julie Schneyer, an organizer of the protest, joined the dozens of people who took part in the "social distance protest" in their vehicles as others held up signs while walking around the prison. She and others demanded an end to solitary confinement practices and improved food and medical treatment during the coronavirus outbreak.

HIV Prison Activists Are Leading A Freedom Movement

April 23, 2020 By Emily Hobson & Laura McTighe, Truthout. Organize! COVID-19, health, HIV/AIDS, Prisoner rights

When AIDS hit prisons and jails in the 1980s, incarcerated people organized. They developed peer education programs to counter stigma and slow transmission, established buddy programs to provide mutual support, led hunger and medication strikes to challenge medical neglect, and worked with outside supporters to file class-action lawsuits and to win compassionate release. The Prisoner Education Project on AIDS and AIDS Counseling and Education in New York state prisons, and similar projects in federal lockup became the best known among hundreds of efforts behind bars. Rusti Miller-Hill, a formerly incarcerated woman living with HIV, said of her emergence as an HIV activist in jail: “I needed to live, and that was my way of fighting.”

Caravans Are Demanding Immediate Release Of Prisoners During COVID-19 Crisis

April 21, 2020 By Prisoners Solidarity Committee/Peoples Power Assembly, Popular Resistance. Resist! COVID-19, Prisoner rights, Prisons

Local activists caravan in Baltimore demanded the immediate release of prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic. On Saturday, April 18th, 2020, a coalition of Baltimore area activists organized a caravan to Baltimore area prisons to show solidarity and demand that Governor Hogan immediately begin to release prisoners amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Participating organizations included People’s Power Assembly, Baltimore Peace Action, Black Alliance for Peace, the Truth and Justice for Marlyn Barnes Campaign, and Ujima People’s Progress Party.

Federal Prisons Make Phone Calls Free

April 20, 2020 Shani Saxon, Colorlines. Create! Communication, COVID-19, Federal Prisons, Prisoner rights

Now that in-person prison visits have been banned amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced plans to make prison phone and video calls free for incarcerated people, Politico reports. Prison reform advocates have long condemned the unreasonably high prices predatory phone companies charge incarcerated people to make phone calls. Those concerns were exacerbated once the COVID-19 pandemic began tearing through prison populations across the country, making face-to-face visits impossible. Twelve Senators wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the BOP, asking the agencies to cease burdening the 226,000 incarcerated people and their families with unnecessary fees, especially when their ability to maintain communication is now more urgent than ever.

Federal Prison Factories Kept Running As Coronavirus Spreads

April 11, 2020 Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger, and Joseph Neff, The Marshall Project. Educate! COVID-19, health, Prison Labor, Prisoner rights

As the coronavirus spread across the country, Patrick Jones kept reporting to his job in the textile factory at the federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana. He’d worked there for years, sewing tidy buttonholes on government uniforms. Though the highly contagious virus was creeping into prisons by mid-March, Jones and his fellow inmates were working without masks, according to interviews with family and prisoners who knew him. He collapsed on March 19 and was taken to a hospital. About a week later, he died from COVID-19. Shortly after his death, the pandemic’s first in a federal Bureau of Prisons facility, the agency announced a nationwide 14-day “lockdown,” saying inmates would be mostly kept in their cells to decrease the spread of the virus.

Impact Of COVID-19 On Prisons

April 5, 2020 the Prison Policy Initiative. Create! COVID-19, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Decarceration, health, Prisoner rights

Prisons and jails are amplifiers of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, because the conditions that can keep diseases from spreading - such as social distancing - are nearly impossible to achieve in correctional facilities. So what should criminal justice agencies be doing to protect public health? On this page, we're tracking examples of state and local agencies taking meaningful steps to slow the spread of COVID-19. (So far, however, no state or municipality has implemented all of our five key policy ideas, nor met the demands issued by various organizations nationwide.) Can't find what you're looking for here? See our list of other webpages aggregating information about the criminal justice system and COVID-19.

Court: Florida Can’t Bar Felons From Vote Over Fines, Fees

February 20, 2020 BobCaina Calvan and Curt Anderson, AP News. Educate! Elections, Florida, Prisoner rights, Voting

Tallahassee, FL — Florida cannot, for now, bar felons who served their time from registering to vote simply because they have failed to pay all fines and fees stemming from their cases, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Tallahassee federal judge’s preliminary injunction that a state law implementing Amendment 4 amounted to an unfair poll tax that would disenfranchise many of the released felons. “We disagree with the ruling,” said Helen Ferre, chief spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. She said the state would immediately ask the entire 11th Circuit to reconsider. The case is one of several now before judges amid high-stakes legal skirmishes over Florida elections, which have drawn national scrutiny because of the state’s perennial status as a political battleground and the razor-thin margins deciding some high-profile contests.

Anatomy Of A Hunger Strike: A Prisoner Speaks

February 14, 2020 Demetrius Grant/ Joe Piette, editor, Workers.org Strategize! Activists, Hunger Strike, Prisoner rights

Many protests against mass incarceration have taken place on the streets of U.S. cities over the last decade. Many resistance struggles have also been waged by individuals or groups of prisoners inside the prison walls, often without any support from or knowledge of by people or press on the outside.

Our Prisons Have A Medical Crisis

January 27, 2020 Shandre Delaney, Lawatthemargins.com Educate! Health Care, Prisoner rights, Prisons

I advocate for prisoners through the Human Rights Coalition Fed-Up! We believe that although prisoners lose their right to live in a free society, they do not lose their civil or human rights. We receive calls and letters from prisoners and their families daily. A large portion of the mail exposes inhumane medical conditions that amount to cruel and unusual punishment. What we are learning is quite alarming and an outrage.

Chaos Erupts At Infamous Prison As Legislature Fails To Provide Funding

January 16, 2020 By Jerry Mitchell, Propublica.org Educate! Mississippi, Prisoner rights, Prisons

One prisoner strangled another to death while other inmates cheered the killing. Two convicts escaped a dilapidated building by walking out an open door. Maximum-security detainees freely roamed hallways, beating and threatening others. Violence has roiled the Mississippi prison system for more than a week, with state corrections officials imposing a statewide lockdown and a county coroner declaring that gangs in the prisons have launched an all-out war against one another.

Advancing Rights Restoration: Where Should Civil Rights Stop?

September 14, 2019 Sawari Amani, Sawari Mi. Strategize! Civil Rights, Democracy, Prisoner rights, Voting Rights

This week was called by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) to be Unchain the Vote Week focused on bringing attention to the unconstitutional, dehumanizing act of felony disenfranchisement that plagues 48 of the 50 United States. During this week outside organizers hosted and attended events in solidarity with inside organizers’ call. One of the events I attended was the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Symposium, The Road to Re-Enfranchisement: Advancing Rights Restoration. The event was a closed invite only collaboration between New York and New Jersey attended by aligned organizations across the country including grassroots organizers like Initiate Justice, Emancipation Initiative and Millions for Prisoners (all of which are apart of the Right2Vote Campaign) as well as larger organizations like Demos, the Vera Institute and Common Cause.

Students Lead The Movement To Restore Prisoners’ Voting Rights On The East Coast

April 9, 2019 Amani Sawari, Sawarimi.org Organize! Electoral Politics, Prisoner rights, Student Activism

Currently the only two states in which incarcerated individuals have the right to vote. In Maine and Vermont incarcerated individuals never lost their voting rights. These two states also have the whitest prison populations and with the realization that policies never came to strip the rights of incarcerated citizens in the north-most region of the east cost, the argument that prisoners lose their voting rights as a form of punishment for their ‘breaking social contract’ is false looking at our reality. It’s also worth noting that incarcerated citizens’ loss of voting rights wasn’t a standard practice in the United States.

In Landslide Colorado Voters Abolish Prison Slavery

February 21, 2019 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Create! Abolition of Slavery, Prison Strike, Prisoner rights

Last November, Colorado became the first state to abolish prison slavery. Colorado voted overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing slavery and forced servitude as punishment for a crime. Abolish Slavery Colorado‘s co-chair Jumoke Emery said: "Regardless how people feel about the criminal justice system, the ultimate outcome is that it shouldn’t be slavery." The victory for prisoner rights comes at a time of resistance by prisoners. Abolishing prison slavery was the second demand of the national prison strike.

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