Prisons

Prisoners Suffer Gross Human Rights Violations. Now They’re Standing & Speaking Up.

January 18, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Educate! Human Rights, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisoner rights, Prisons

The message goes on to detail the three main demands via examples such as price gouging prisoners on products like a case of soup that costs $17 in the Canteen as opposed to the roughly $4 it costs on the outside. As the writer points out, “This is highway robbery without a gun.” With regards to parole, Florida eliminated parole for non-capital felonies back in 1984 meaning that the death penalty can’t be used in those cases. Instead, those serving life in prison have no hope for parole and those with near-life sentences have very little hope. Rehabilitation is a foregone conclusion. This also means that the “gain time” system for prison labor is essentially meaningless to these prisoners. Florida prisons offer what’s known as “gain time” for prison labor. Prisoners work in exchange for time struck off their sentence. The problem here is three-fold.

Plea For Solidarity With Florida Prisoners On Strike

January 17, 2018 By Ryan Sullivan, Medium.com Resist! Florida, Prison Strike, Prisoner rights, Prisons

The inmates across the Florida penitentiary complex are striking to protest the inhumane conditions they are facing on a daily basis. Conditions including police/guard brutality, rape and abuse, grueling unpaid slave labor, and price gouging of personal care items and other necessities. The inmates are calling on all organizing groups, religious groups, and people who empathize with their plight to speak out and draw attention to their struggle against insufferable conditions. U.S. corporations, police, prison guard unions, and politicians are complicit in the largest system of mass oppression anywhere in the world today. Yet many of us — U.S. citizens — move through our days like millions of our family members, friends, and neighbors are not disappearing away to rapey dungeons where they perform slave labor under abysmal conditions. We tell ourselves fairy tales like, ‘they deserve it’ or ‘they’re getting help.’

New Legal Filing Against Guantanamo Prison

January 10, 2018 Staff, Ccrjustice.org Resist! Guantanamo, Prison abolition, Prisons

January 11 marks the 16th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo, and the first anniversary under this president. If you're in the D.C. area, please join us at 11:30 a.m. to gather with human rights activists, torture survivors, Guantánamo attorneys, 9/11 family members, and members of diverse faith communities at Lafayette Square, at the north side of the White House. Together, we will rally to end indefinite detention, close the prison, and stop torture. We're also excited to announce the book launch of There is a Man Under that Hood, which sets the words of Luke Nephew's (Peace Poets) remarkable poem to photographs of anti-torture demonstrations taken or curated by Justin Norman (Witness Against Torture). The afterword is written by CCR Senior Staff Attorney Omar Farah.

Florida Prisoners Announce Work Stoppage To Cripple Prison System

January 5, 2018 Staff, Fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com Resist! Florida, Labor, Prisoner rights, Prisons

The following message is from a group of prisoners who are spread throughout the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC). It was sent anonymously and compiled from a series of correspondences received on November 26 and 27 by both the Gainesville chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and the national Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. We have been able to verify the authenticity of this message which was also posted on SPARC (Supporting Prisoners and Real Change), a social media page for Florida prisoners and their families. According to their statement, these prisoners plan to initiate a work stoppage or “laydown” beginning Monday, January 15th, coinciding with MLK Day, in nonviolent protest of conditions in FL prisons. They are calling it Operation PUSH.

4 Reasons For Surprising Change In Racial Incarceration Trendlines

December 28, 2017 By Phillip Smith, AlterNet.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, Prisons, Racism

It's long been a given that racial disparities plague the nation's criminal justice system. That's still true—black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than that of white people—but the disparities are decreasing, and there are a number of interesting reasons behind the trend. That's according to a report released this month by the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. Researchers reviewed annual reports from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting system and found that between 2000 and 2015, the incarceration rate for black men dropped by nearly a quarter (24 percent). During the same period, the white male incarceration rate bumped up slightly, the BJS numbers indicate.

The Art Of Keeping Guantánamo Open

December 7, 2017 Erin L. Thompson, creativeresistance.org Create! Art, Guantanamo, Prisons

By Erin L. Thompson for Tom Dispatch - We spent the day at a beach in Brooklyn. Skyscrapers floated in the distance and my toddler kept handing me cigarette filters she had dug out of the sand. When we got home, I checked my email. I had been sent a picture of a very different beach: deserted, framed by distant headlands with unsullied sands and clear waters. As it happened, I was looking not at a photograph, but at a painting by a man imprisoned at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Of the roughly 780 people once imprisoned there, he is one of 41 prisoners who remain, living yards away from the Caribbean Sea. Captives from the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror began to arrive at that offshore prison in January 2002. Since Guantánamo is located on a military base in Cuba and the detainees were labeled“alien enemy combatants,” they were conveniently to be without rights under either United States or international law and so open to years of whatever their jailers wanted to do to them (including torture). President Barack Obama released 197 of them in his years in office, but was unable to fulfill the promise he made on his first day: to close Guantánamo. The man whose painting I saw has been held for nearly 15 years without trial, without even having charges filed against him. The email came from his lawyer who had volunteered to defend a number of Guantánamo detainees.

FCC Wants To Remove Caps On Calls From Jails & Prisons

November 24, 2017 Bruce A. Dixon, blackagendareport.com Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Prisons

By Bruce A. Dixon for Black Agenda Report - When it comes to the people’s will, the FCC have never been good listeners. The Trump FCC wants to kill subsidies for poor people to pay phone and internet bills, and remove caps on how much telecoms can charge the families of prisoners to receive phone calls. Its FCC chair used to represent a prison phone company. And they intend to kill network neutrality. Early this week former Verizon lobbyist and current FCC chairman Ajit Pai unveiled the details of the Trump administration’s plan to scrap the network neutrality rules which prevent telecoms from selectively blocking or throttling traffic, from segregating the internet into slow and fast lanes to favor or penalize customers and content providers according to the whims of corporate “business logic.” Net neutrality is the legal notion that the internet should be available to all content, to all technologies, to all messages and to all people, and that nobody has the right to restrict who can send, receive or connect to it. The concept of network neutrality emerged out of almost a century of peoples struggle against the greedy monopoly interests that controlled telephone networks in the US. Phone companies – originally there was only one – THE phone company, which prohibited devices manufactured by others to connect to phone networks, and refused to build infrastructure out to small towns, rural and poorer urban areas.

Beyond Prisons: Crisis At McCormick Correctional Institution

November 1, 2017 Brian Sonenstein, shadowproof.com Petitions and Online Actions Prisoner rights, Prisons, State Violence

By Brian Sonenstein for Shadow Proof - Journalist Jared Ware interviewed people incarcerated at McCormick Correctional Institution in South Carolina regarding the ongoing crisis there for a special edition of Beyond Prisons. McCormick has been on lockdown for weeks. At the end of September, incarcerated people reported officials were withholding drinking water and engaging in excessive force after a water main broke outside the facility. For three days, people on the inside reported they did not have drinkable water. This caused tensions in the facility to boil over into multiple incidents, which were met with more repression by prison staff. Incarcerated people feel staff are intentionally trying to provoke them to justify worsening brutality and repressive conditions. One man was reportedly shot with rubber bullets multiple times after leaving the shower. He has been transferred to another facility after he was taken the prison’s medical center. On Monday, October 30, advocates reported people had briefly taken over the restrictive housing unit and set fires before returning to their cells. Few news outlets have covered the crisis from the perspective of people on the inside, instead relying exclusively on reports from corrections officials, who claim the violence was a product of unruly prisoners and staff shortages. This claim has been used to justify the lockdown as well as the presence of riot squads and officers from nearby prisons.

As We Close Rikers, Essential State-Level Reforms Needed

October 19, 2017 Glenn E. Martin, www.gothamgazette.com Create! Prisons, Reform, Rikers

By Glenn E. Martin for Gotham Gazette - Anyone following New York City politics knows about JustLeadershipUSA’s mission to close the jails at Rikers Island. In less than a year, the #CLOSErikers campaign successfully pressured Mayor Bill de Blasio to commit to shuttering the jail complex. It is no longer a question of if Rikers will close, but when. But the campaign has always known that closing Rikers would require reforms at the state level as well. An overhaul of our statewide bail, speedy trial, and discovery statutes is necessary to reduce the population at Rikers so that it can finally and expeditiously close its doors. Even if Rikers was closed tomorrow, these reforms would still be necessary. While New York City has successfully reduced its jail population over the past few years, county jail populations across the state are growing. Today, 63% of people held in jail in New York State are held in jails outside New York City. Of those 25,000 husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, and loved ones who are sitting in jails across our state, 70% have not been convicted but remain unjustifiably caged while they await the outcome of their cases. This reality is a consequence of punitive and discriminatory criminal justice policies that have decimated communities, primarily poor communities and communities of color, for decades.

Jails Replace In-Person Visitation With Video Screens

October 15, 2017 Mike Ludwig, www.truthout.org Educate! Greed, mental health, Prisoner rights, Prisons

By Mike Ludwig for Truthout. The rash of suicides alarmed mental health experts and local watchdogs, and Arce's death has advocates calling out the lack of equal access to services for disabled people in prison. Despite concerns about the mental health of its prisoners and alleged discrimination against disabled people, the local sheriff's office no longer allows in-person visitation at the jail, which serves major suburbs of New Orleans. Critics say changing the visitation policy could take a heavy toll on people who are already in an emotionally challenging position.

While Prison Activists March For Humane Treatment, Florida Shuts Off Visits This Weekend

August 21, 2017 Julie K. Brown, www.miamiherald.com Resist! Florida, Prisoner rights, Prisons

By Julie K. Brown for Miami Herald - Visitation to all Florida state prisons has been canceled this weekend after evidence surfaced that inmates are planning possible uprisings to coincide with Saturday’s march for prisoners’ human rights in Washington, D.C. Julie Jones, Secretary for the Florida Department of Corrections, announced the move as a precaution, given the agency’s staff shortage and “credible intelligence’’ that groups of inmates at several institutions were planning disturbances. “There’s no reason to be alarmed. We are just being proactive,’’ said Michelle Glady, a spokeswoman for the department. The agency is taking preemptive steps to secure facilities so that staff and inmates will be secure, she said. Social media has been advertising a “Millions for Prisoners’ Human Rights” rally on Saturday in Washington, but it’s not clear who is spearheading the movement. Postings advertise the effort as a way to raise awareness about the problem of mass incarceration and human rights violations in prisons across the country.

As Sessions Promises Drug War Escalation, Listen To Drug War Prisoners

August 4, 2017 Doran Larson, www.theconversation.com Educate! Drug War, Jeff Sessions, Prisons, Technology, Trump Administration

By Doran Larson for The Conversation - Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced a return to a pre-Obama policy of seeking maximum penalties for all drug crimes, including low-level, nonviolent offenses. Criticism from politicians, criminologists, lawyers and others was swift and unambiguous. Based on a discredited belief in a zero-sum relationship between crime and incarceration rates, the thinking behind this policy was called “one-dimensional,” “archaic,” “misguided” and “dumb.” America’s unprecedented attempt to jail its way out of crime long ago passed the point of diminishing returns. Drug trafficking in particular sees a replacement effect: Removing one drug seller simply makes room for another (often accompanied by a violent reshuffling of territories). Excessive incarceration can also damage communities and can actually make an individual more, not less, likely to reoffend. I have been facilitating a writing workshop inside Attica Correctional Facility since 2006. For the past eight years, I have solicited, collected, helped publish and digitally disseminated the first-person writing of incarcerated Americans. Those on the receiving end of the attorney general’s misguided policy will naturally feel his words more deeply than others. The writers among them will be burdened with responsibility to make those feelings known.

Barriers To Changing Legal Names And Gender Markers In Prison

July 13, 2017 Victoria Law, www.truth-out.org Resist! Gender, LGBTQ, Prisoner rights, Prisons, Trans

By Victoria Law for Truthout - During her 30 years in California's prison system, Cookie Bivens has seen numerous trans women attempt to change their name and gender marker while incarcerated. Not a single woman ever succeeded. In California, people seeking to legally change their name or gender marker must file an application with the county court and pay a filing fee of nearly $500. (A person earning less than $2,127 per month can file for a fee waiver.) Once the paperwork is filed, the court sets a hearing date within six to 12 weeks. If the court receives no objections to the proposed name and gender marker change, the petition is granted. Incarcerated trans people face an extra hurdle: obtaining approval from the prison's superintendent and other administrators. Without that approval, they cannot begin the court process.

With Less Crime, Closed Dutch Prisons Are Instead Being Used To House Refugees

June 27, 2017 Brianna Acuesta, www.trueactivist.com Create! Housing, Netherlands, Prisons, Refugees

By Brianna Acuesta for True Activist - It might be hard to imagine a world where prisons actually close because of a reduction in prisoners if you live in the U.S., but in many countries abroad this is not such a rare occasion. In the United States, the existence of private prisons that churn out a profit means that the prison-industrial complex focuses less on helping inmates stay out of trouble and more on how the inmates can benefit prison owners. In the Netherlands, however, crime has been rapidly decreasing for the last decade and 19 of the nearly 60 prisons have since closed. Some prisons even took in inmates from Belgium and Norway just to keep up their locations. While this may have resulted in a loss of jobs, it means that less people are being incarcerated, which is always a positive in any country. On top of fewer prisoners and less crime, the government in the Netherlands found a way to repurpose the closed prisons: they now house refugees in there.

Slave Labor: Prisoners Work In State Buildings For Under .24 Cents An Hour

June 27, 2017 Celisa Calacal, www.alternet.org Educate! Prison Labor, Prisons, Slave labor

By Celisa Calacal for AlterNet - When activist Sam Sinyangwe was awaiting a meeting with the governor’s office at the Louisiana state capitol building in Baton Rouge, he noticed something odd. A black man in a dark-blue jumpsuit was printing papers while a correctional guard—with a badge and gun—stood watching over him. The pair stood out against the white, middle-aged legislators populating the building. Sinyangwe said he did not know exactly what he was looking at, until he saw another black man in the same dark-blue outfit serving food at the capitol building’s cafeteria. This time, Sinyangwe noticed that the man had a patch on his chest labeling him a prisoner of the Louisiana State Department of Corrections, complete with an identification number. Sinyangwe realized that the server, the man printing papers and the other people working in the lunch line were all prisoners. Inmates working at the capitol building in Baton Rouge is a common sight. Prisoners work in the Louisiana governor’s mansion and inmates clean up after Louisiana State University football games as well. But the labor practice of having inmates work in state government buildings extends beyond Louisiana; at least six other states in the U.S. allow for this practice: Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Georgia.

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